


Snow on Snow

by theidealego



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, F/M, M/M, Masochistic Tommy Shelby, Multi, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Topping from the Bottom, sadistic Freddie Thorne
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-05-24 09:33:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6149170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theidealego/pseuds/theidealego
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas Shelby wears a mask- a mask of cool indifference and effortless control. It's a mask he donned during the Great War, and it hasn't come off since. But sometimes, when the weight of his growing empire becomes too heavy to bear, Tommy needs to give up that control. Their long, difficult history makes his childhood friend Freddie Thorne the perfect witness and participant to Tommy's moments of weakness, but as their arrangement becomes more and more intimate, lines of power and consent blur. </p><p>(This fic is narrated by Freddie Thorne and is set between the end of series one and the beginning of series two.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so please be nice! That said, I really appreciate constructive feedback, so please please please comment and let me know what you think! 
> 
> Also, please note that although there is nothing sexual in the first chapter, things will be taking that road eventually. 
> 
> I will try to post the next chapter sometime within the next week or so, depending on the feedback I get.
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)

The first time Tommy lets me beat him, neither of us has planned it. One moment we’re struggling, our shoes kicking up the thin layer of sawdust covering the floor of the abandoned warehouse we’d chosen for our parley. The next, Tommy is on the ground, and I’m kicking him over and over. In that moment, it occurs to me that Tommy is too good a fighter to drop his guard. I’ve watched him fight, seen him stagger to his feet again and again.

            It occurs to me that he’s letting me win. It just doesn’t matter. My vision has narrowed to the body lying under my vicious feet, and the blood rushing in my head leaves no room for sympathy or doubt.

            I took a bullet for Tommy in France. You might think such a sacrifice would leave behind a mark—that it would form some bond between us and give us peace. You’d be wrong. In this moment, the memory of that bullet piercing my chest only makes me want to hurt him more, to give back the pain he’s cost me.

            We share nothing. In the years since France, Tommy’s shut out everyone. Even the man who saved his life.

            After the war we needed each other, but Tommy closed himself off. It’s as if the drive to survive burned through him, erasing every other instinct, bubbling over until it was a drive to thrive, to control, to win. Now Tommy fights his own personal wars as if he were still in France, as if every moment carries life and death under its wings. He’s become a dangerous man. A violent man. The last man in the world a poor devil like me should dare to challenge.

            Yet now, when my anger and frustration boil over, he doesn’t fight to win. In the seconds after I land my first good blow, he looks at me, his pale blue eyes unreadable, fresh blood coloring his lips, and then he goes down. He doesn’t cry out once, doesn’t try to defend himself even when in burning fury I color his back and ribs with bruises.

             By the time it’s over, I’ve forgotten whose bitter words began the fight, what we fought over. Maybe it was Ada, or his bloody gang, or my communist ties. Deep down I know it must have been me—my anger at Tommy, at the way he’s changed.

            Of course, the war changed us all. Most it changed to corpses. Those of us who did return home returned altered, damaged. Danny goes off like a firecracker every few weeks, releasing all his pain and fear in terrible but momentary explosions. I pour my heart and soul into the unions, aiming the pistol of my anger at new injustices. But Thomas Shelby is different—not only from his former self, but from the masses of men whose minds broke in ordinary, predictable ways. Tommy came back cold, his former dreams solidified into iron ambitions, his former laughter turned to one steely expression. Nothing moves Tommy now. No guilt restrains him; no violence is beneath him. While the rest of us scrabble in the dirt, picking up the pieces of our shattered hopes and dreams, Tommy’s building an empire. He’s made himself invulnerable, invincible.

            _Yet tonight he let me win._

            Stumbling home to Ada’s bed I replay the scene in my mind. I watch Tommy fall, struggle to recall the look in his eyes when I spat at him and turned away. By the time my feet hit the front step, I’ve come to the only conclusion possible. The look in Tommy’s eyes when I hit him was one I haven’t seen there since France. It was a look as unfamiliar to me now as his laugh or his smile. It was a look of undisguised pleading, of desperation.

            And he hadn’t been pleading for me to stop.

            I carry the weight of that knowledge for many weeks before I see Tommy again. When I do see him, he’s riding through Small Heath on the city’s finest horse, a razor glinting in his cap, the cold, ice-blue mask firmly in place.

            Even if I told my story—mumbled it over a pint in some dark, dingy pub—no one would believe it. The four syllables “Mr. Shelby” command more respect on these streets than the name of the king himself. The business, as he calls it, is taking off; the Shelbys are rolling in cash. I’ve never seen anyone so _in control_ , so fucking self-assured. Weeks pass. I begin to think what I saw that night was an illusion. Surely, the man people fear is the real Thomas Shelby. Surely the callous, ambitious side of himself he shows to the world is the only version of my childhood friend the war left intact. I remind myself that the traits I’d most admired in him as a child have become brittle in the fires of the Great War. I tell myself his lust for power has turned him to stone, that I didn't see what I thought I saw.

            Weeks pass. Tommy’s power grows by the day, and with it my anger. I find myself imagining the impact of my shoe against his ribs, remembering the warmth of his body under my fists. Absentmindedly I press upon the split skin of my knuckles, shrug off Ada’s frustration when the wounds refuse to heal.

            Then it comes—a summons from the king of the Shelbys. The location he’s chosen is the same where I held a gun to his head just a year before, overlooking the canal where we used to swim.

            _Tommy wants to see you_. Though defying Tommy has become almost a pastime of mine lately, it doesn’t even occur to me to refuse.

            As I sit on the ledge waiting, I don’t feel afraid. Something—anger, my mind insists—buzzes in my head, my stomach.

            Exactly at 7:00 I hear his footsteps behind me and turn, expecting to find myself staring down the barrel of a gun. Instead, I find myself looking at the grip.

            “Take it,” Tommy instructs, eyes piercing.

            “What the hell are you doing, Tom?” I scoff, brushing the weapon aside.

            “Take it,” Tommy insists again, his voice quiet, and for the first time in a long time I feel what every other man and woman in Small Heath must feel—the irresistible urge to obey. I take the gun. It feels good in my hand. With the other hand, I draw my own pistol and train both weapons on Tommy.

            “What do you want, Tommy?” I ask, affecting confidence, working hard not to let him see the pistols shaking in my hands. He raises his eyebrows.

            “I think a better question would be, what do _you_ want?”

            He sounds strange, looks strange disarmed.

            “Stop with the fucking riddles, Tommy,” I spit. “What is this? Do you want money? Or,” I scoff, “are you going to tell me to get out of town, or you’ll blow my brains out? You know I’m not leaving. Not for you, not for Ada, not for any fucking Shelby.”

            His expression goes steely once again.

            “Not that, then,” I sigh. “You want me to kill someone, is that it? Once of my union men crossed you and now you want him put down?”

            Something flickers in his eyes, and to my surprise he kneels. I stand a bit straighter, keeping the guns trained on him, my fingers clenching on the triggers.

            “You want to kill me,” he says, voice even. Lost his piercing eyes I nod, then shake my head, confused. _I don’t_ , I realize. _Don’t want to kill him_. The bitter hole in my chest isn’t that deep. Not yet.

            “Good,” he affirms, holding my gaze earnestly. He pauses between his words, choosing them carefully. “But you do want to hurt me. To make me pay.”

            I nod, captivated. In all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Tommy quite like this. In France I’d seen him desperate, but this was different. Then, I had been lying in the dirt beside him; now, I’m behind the gun. It dawns on me that this meeting is not about business at all.

            For a moment the façade breaks, and I can see Tommy steeling himself for something. His face twists slightly, and I think I can see something of the boy in his eyes when he stretches out his arms and says, “Then hurt me.”

            I could pretend not to know what he’s talking about. I could spit upon him in disgust and walk away. I could even put my arm around his shoulders and comfort him. I could help him find another way to wrestle the fear and pain we all carry. But something about the weight of the guns in my hands holds me rooted to the spot. Something about the way his voice breaks on those three words sends a thrill through my bones.

            I set one gun on the ledge and, drawing close behind him, hold the other to his temple. Slowly, I remove his cap and hold it, examining it closely. My hands no longer tremble.

            “You’re a fucking king,” I whisper numbly, not quite believing my luck. “You’re Tommy fucking Shelby.”

            “And yet here I am,” he reminds me, voice low, eyes trained on the horizon. As if in a dream I press the razor in his cap to his cheek, drawing blood. He draws in a sharp breath, but doesn’t pull away.

            “I don’t really need this, do I?” I ask rhetorically, tossing the gun away and the cap after it. He only nods.

            Stacked in the corner I spy cords of wood, lengths of rope, a few rusty tools—remnants of some abandoned project. I walk in that direction, conscious of every sound my boots make on the stone. Out of the corner of my eye I notice his elbow move, and for a split second it occurs to me that this might be some bizarre kind of trap—but then I watch his fingers deftly unbutton his collar, and my fists unclench. Pretending to examine the ropes, I watch out of the corner of my eye as he slips his shirt from his shoulders, carefully folds it, and sets it aside.

            The tattoo above his heart is new—something to do with the Peaky fucking Blinders, no doubt. I pick up one piece of wood, decided it’s too light, put it down. I feel the rope—strong and rough. I wondered whether I should tie his hands, whether he wants me to. Whether I want to.

            Finally, I picked up a long, thin piece of wood. I’m about to turn back toward Tommy when something else catches my eye—the dull leather of a razor strop tucked beneath the stacks of wooden slats. I snatch it up, snap it against the wooden joist nearby. Tommy blinks at the sound, but doesn’t flinch. It surprises me how much I’d wanted to see him flinch.

            I stand in front of him and he just looks at me, past me, toward something I can’t see. Unnerved, I walk slowly around him. Finally, I fill my lungs with a deep, shaky breath and strike him.

            I’ve never struck anyone like that before. I’ve been in fights more times than I can count; I’ve been beaten myself by the police, by drunken men; but I’ve never struck a man outside the heat of the moment. A thin red welt rises on Tommy’s white back, but he hasn’t even cried out. It isn’t enough. The angle is wrong. I haven’t struck as hard as I can, as I should.

            “Stand up,” I command, barely recognizing my own voice. Tommy complies, his face still turned from me. I seize his shoulder and turned him around, catching a glimpse of fear before the mask slides into place. _Fear of me?_

_No. Fear that I’ll stop. Fear that I’ll ridicule him for wanting this._

            Gripping his arm, I lead him to a nearby wooden joist. Hands trembling again, I take hold of his wrists, guiding his hands above his head to grip the crossbeam. He stands stock still, waiting. I realize for the first time that I’m the taller of us two. How had I never seen it before?

            The realization gives me a surge of strength. At the second blow, his breath catches audibly; the third draws out a low moan. Standing slightly to the side, I can see his eyes squeezed shut, his knuckles white on the wood. I feel a sense of power building—something more than anger, less than hate. Blow after blow I strike. Tommy’s knuckles grow whiter still, his cries louder, his breath shorter. Finally, his fingers slip from the joist, and he drops to his knees, making me miss a blow. The hard leather catches him on the temple. Thrown off balance, I watch as he lifts his fingers to his head. They come away bloody.

            “That’s all for today,” he says quietly, as if, after all, he were the one in control. My vision narrows.

            _Thwack_. I land a sharp blow to his shoulder. He looks up at me, actually surprised.

            “I say when it’s over.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears, as if I’m hearing myself from far away. Tommy must smile that twisted, sad smile of his, because the next thing I knew I’m hitting him, first with the strap, then with my fists. When I’m done I stand over him and nudge the back of his neck with my boot. Fearlessly, he uncurls his body. Arms stretched out, he lies looking up at me.

            “What,” I ask, panting, “the devil is wrong with you?”

            Wearily he wipes the blood from his eyes and stares at the ceiling.

            “Next time, try to spare the face,” he says simply.

            “So you can go back to your bloody family and pretend this never happened?” I ask, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all.

            “Yes,” he says, and in spite of the mask his voice breaks on the single syllable. It terrifies me that I love the sound.

            “Fuck you,” I reply, turning on my heel, turning from the image that so fascinates and repulses me. I don’t know how long he lies there after I’ve gone. I only know that near midnight he’s walking back from the Garrison to his flat. When, walking by, I see Arthur slap him on the back in a fit of laughter, I’m the only one to catch the fleeting look of pain that visits his face. I might even be imagining it. The king is back.

 

 

            It’s weeks before Tommy sends for me again. When one of the Peaky lads finally presses the note into my hand, excitement and anger wage a war within me. Making Tommy bleed gave me power, but in the end, I was under his thumb. I was only giving him what he wanted. I know if this arrangement is going to continue, I have to find a way to break him even more than he already is broken—a way to take something from him he isn’t offering to give. I resolve to make him scream this time, to make him beg me to stop with tears in his eyes.

            This time, I tear the shirt from his back. His eyes glint strangely, but he doesn’t protest as I ruin his expensive clothing to run my hand over the faded bruises still visible here and there upon his skin. I’m rougher with him, pushing him, taunting him. I call him things I never thought I’d call him to his face, things I knew deep down he never was—a coward, a killer, a man without honor. But even though I keep hitting him long after he’s dropped to the ground, he never so much as protests. In fact, this time, from the moment the sound of his shoes on the pavement reaches my ears until the moment I stop hitting him, he doesn’t say anything at all. He seems to drink in the pain as if it were its own opposite—relief, comfort, even pleasure. It occurs to me that I might actually kill him before he asks me to stop. So, finally, I stop.

            At first I consider walking away, leaving him there again. He’s gotten what he wanted. He’d asked for this. But, with a sick feeling, I realize I can’t leave until I’ve gotten what _I_ want. I crouch beside him.

            “Face looks alright,” I say lightly. In spite of myself, I’ve followed his request. _His command_. Whether I’ve complied out of some deeply entrenched, involuntary sense of respect, or because I want to make sure I’ll have the chance to beat him bloody again, I don’t know. He’s silent, but he looks at me, and for the first time he isn’t looking through me.

            “What happened to you, Tommy?” I ask. I want to hear him speak, to hear his voice break on words he doesn’t want to say. Words I need to hear.

            “You know what happened, Freddy. You were there, same as I was.” He sounds exhausted.

            “But why all this? Why the Blinders? You kill when there doesn’t have to be any killing, you strut around like the fucking general of your own sodding army,” my voice rises to a growl, “and now you’re asking people to beat the shit out of you.”

            “Not people,” he corrects me, looking out at the sky. “You. Just you.”

            I grip his shoulder hard, making him wince. “You’re playing with fire, Tom. Sometimes I’m so angry at you, so fucking mad…”

            I can’t go one, because I’m not sure how I can explain it, not sure whether I want to try. How do you tell a man you want to see him bleed, that it lifts a weight from your shoulders to witness the pain in his eyes? In what words can I, a poor communist agitator, tell the king of Small Heath the truth?

            “You want to hurt me. But you won’t kill me. That’s why I chose you.”

            Somehow, he already knows. He doesn’t even have to look at me to see it. How my heart’s racing. How even now the sight of Thomas Shelby brought low fills me with a strange, buoyant pleasure.

            I twist my fingers in his hair and force his gaze to mine. “This isn’t all to do with _you_ ,” I whisper violently. “I’m not just some cog in your bloody wheel. Someday, I’m going to hurt you more than you ask me to. More than you want me to. Someday, Tommy, you’ll wish you never chose me.”

            He smiles the sad, twisted smile.

            “I’m counting on it,” he replies, leaning his head back. For a few moments I stay. I watch as he stares into the inky depths of the high ceiling, chin tilted up, his battered back pressed against the cold ground. Then I leave him there, wind my way back through the slums, pubs, and tenements that make up Tommy’s kingdom. Whatever twisted sense of control, whatever strange satisfaction I’d felt begins to fade, dissipating with the day’s smoke and ash.

            By the time I reach home I can see a few stars glinting, diamonds in a mud sky.

            Already, I want more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am posting this chapter so close on the heels of the first because I feel like it's better-- much better. So please read it? And give feedback, because like I said, I'm new at this. 
> 
> This chapter is when things start getting sexual, so pay attention to the warnings attached to this work, and don't read anything you don't want to. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

            

              Sometimes Tommy calls for me multiple times in a week, and I layer crimson and blue on top of faded green and yellow bruises. Other times, he stays away for weeks, even a month. We settle into a routine: I hit him until I’ve tired myself out, and in return he gives me some small piece of himself—a tiny fragment tentatively assembled in low, halting words.

            He never tells me anything specific about the business—not where the money comes from, or where it goes, or who is involved, or what he plans next. He doesn’t trust me to keep those secrets, nor should he. Instead, he tells me secrets of another kind. Some don’t surprise me. I can smell the opium’s smolder on his clothes some nights, so when he stares into empty space and speaks of sweet smoke and heavy, sickening dreams, he only tells me what I already know. When he tells me about the dreams, I can hear the shovels too. As he speaks, I listen to the scraping going on forever, filling the dark with fear like water with ink, choking, suffocating. It isn’t a dream. Not really. It’s a shared memory, present in my mind as much as in his.

            For a long time I wonder at the difference between us now. What made him go so cold? Then, watching the proud set of his shoulders even in pain, catching glimpses of him with his family in the street, it comes to me. He was our protector, a born leader. It’s how he’d always seen himself, even when we were children. The war had given that role a name—Sergeant Major Thomas Shelby. Then, as now, he’d held himself a head and shoulders above the rest of us, and part of me had always hated him for it. But now I saw him in a different light, a different scene. Thomas Shelby was a man standing tall above the rest as the sky fell.

            “You were there, same as I was,” he’d said, but it wasn’t really true. I’d heard the scraping, felt the darkness closing in, screamed as the blood ran through my fingers. When the world exploded into raining dirt and sparks of pain and gunshots, I’d feared for my own life and, in the very furthest recesses of my mind, I’d feared for my comrades. But Tommy had feared for us all, and for himself, every moment. We were his responsibility, not the other way around. In Tommy’s mind, everything, everyone, was his responsibility. And France had shown Tommy that the world was a cruel, dangerous place. You had to be ruthless to come out on top.

            There are moments when I want to comfort Tommy now instead of hitting him. There are moments when I see him as I saw him before—my leader, my comrade, my friend. But there are other moments too, and uglier secrets.

            Sitting in a broken-backed skeleton of a chair, gazing out over the murky water and ashy dockyards of Birmingham, Tommy tells me about the whores he visits.

            “They look like Grace,” he says, voice filled with calm bitterness. The image of the barmaid flashes into my mind. He did love her, then.

            “The way they look at me...” He trails off, icy gaze fixed on the horizon. “But I always pay them fairly. More than fairly.” He’s justifying himself to himself, and failing.

            He tells me of betrayals and beatings, of eyes blinded and bones broken. More than ever, I am repulsed by the collateral damage he accepts as the price for success. Bribes and schemes, murders and cover-ups line Tommy’s pockets with blood money, and meanwhile the BSA workers—my new comrades—scrounge for bread to feed their children.

            My heart hardens more than it softens, and with every syllable Tommy reveals, I gain power. The judgement and disgust in my eyes makes him flinch, sometimes more than the beatings. In either instance the change in his expression is barely perceptible—just the transitory surfacing of some buried pain, clawing for air out of the calm depths.

            It’s not enough.

 

* * *

 

 

            “Where have you been all night, then?” Ada demands, staring at the blood staining the cuff of my sleeve. I know without squinting into the blurry piece of tin we call a mirror that I look like shit.

            “Had some trouble down at the BSA,” I lie. “Fucking coppers.”

            “I thought Tommy got you protection.” Ada frowns. “I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow, when I drop Karl off with Polly.” _Damn_. The baby starts whimpering, and Ada gives an exasperated sigh as she picks him up. When she finally puts him down, I’ve stripped my filthy clothes off and wiped Tommy’s blood from my boots.

            Neither of has to say anything to know what the other wants. Soundlessly, so as not to wake the baby, we climb into bed and tangle ourselves in each other. I savor the softness of her body beneath me, reveling in the warm heat as I move frantically inside her. As she begins to come she covers her mouth with her hand. Almost choking with the power of my own release I look into her eyes, and suddenly they are not hers but Tommy’s.

            Caught up in the moment, I don’t even have time to be horrified. Only later, with her warm breath tickling my chest and her all-seeing eyes closed do I return to that moment. Only then do I begin to acknowledge the rising tension in my chest—the way lately, when I look at Tommy, my breath catches. The way his cries and his confessions send ripples of excitement through my body. The way his eyes, at once defiant and utterly broken, make me feel like the most powerful man in the world, and the weakest.

           

* * *

            One night Tommy sends for me at midnight, when I’m already asleep in bed. There’s no hiding it from Ada—“Tommy wants you,” the lad says, pressing the address into my hand—so I go, giving no further explanation. The address this time is different from any we’ve used before. An old hotel, abandoned and dilapidated but once quite grand, sits between ragged tenements. The streets are humming with the sounds of pubs and whorehouses, where business is just starting to pick up.

            When I find the room specified on the slip of paper, I draw in a deep breath. I try not to notice the anticipation fluttering in my stomach, try not to envision the marks I will leave on Tommy’s skin. I open the door.

            In the dim light, at first I only see Tommy’s seated silhouette, blurred and softened by the dusty, smoky air. The scent of opium stretches its tendrils across the space, reaching my nostrils.

            As my eyes adjust, I realize Tommy is sitting on the bed, a cigarette in one hand and an opium pipe laid out on the table beside him. Then I realize someone has done my job for me.

            Tommy’s face is streaked with blood. His right cheek shows a dark purple bruise, and he draws shallow, halting breaths. His bottom lip is bleeding; he lifts the cigarette to his mouth gingerly. Though he sits straight as an arrow his shirt is torn, and a small pool of blood has formed under his left boot. I wonder if he can stand at all.

            It’s a worse beating than I’ve ever given him. Clearly someone intended to do more than superficial damage _. And succeeded_.

            He doesn’t say a word as I cross the room and stand in front of him. Just as I’m thinking he looks pathetic, he tilts his chin and looks up at me, and my heart skips a beat. Amid all the bruises and blood, the pale blue of his eyes shines even clearer.

            “Fuck, Tommy,” I say, unable to help myself. “What happened to you?”

            “Blinders business,” he replies evenly, returning my stare.

            “Hell, Tommy. I’m not laying a hand on you when you’re like this. Why the fuck did you send for me?” I back away, suddenly unsure of myself.

            “You like confessions," Tommy replies. "Well, I’m in the mood to confess.” I notice something different about his eyes. The pupils are larger, darker.

            “You need a doctor, Tommy, not a fucking confessor,” I sigh. He just looks at me.

            “Fine.” I put a hand on his shoulder, making him draw in a breath. “Let’s get you cleaned up first.” He gives the slightest of nods, puts the cigarette out in the ashtray on the table in one careful, deliberate motion, then reaches to unbutton his shirt. His fingers fumble. One of them looks crooked, possibly broken. Brushing his hands away I finger his collar, slipping the buttons loose one by one. I’m afraid to look at him, and I’m not sure why.

            As I peel the thin fabric away, what I see fills me with inexplicable rage. The clear outline of a boot heel is turning from pink to deep blue under Tommy’s ribs, and countless other smaller bruises and cuts pepper his back, ribs, and shoulders. As I draw the material across his chest, he hisses softly. Surrounding the tattoo above his heart, a cluster of round, evenly spaced burns mark the skin. His eyes flicker to the half-smoked cigarette, and I can’t help wincing.

            “Who did this to you?” I ask, not really expecting an answer. I get none.

            “I’ll take care of it,” he says, as matter-of-factly as if “it” were a horse with a thrown shoe. I feel a fleeting moment of pity for whoever left those scars. Mostly, though, I feel anger. I run my finger over the burns, barely noticing Tommy’s discomfort. Someone has left a mark on him—someone who wasn’t me. Feeling my fingers tighten on his shoulder, I release him and attempt to calm myself.

            In the end, a bottle of whisky and a few torn bedsheets do the job. Tommy makes small, strangled noises in his throat when the alcohol makes contact with each wound, but he doesn’t scream. The opium he’d smoked earlier seems to dull the pain, though he refuses to drink the whisky. Once I’ve finished patching up his back I eye the puddle of blood on the floor, unsure what to do next. Clearly, his wounds are not limited to the regions above the waist. Still, even in this weakened state, Tommy has his pride. I hesitate. Then, closing my eyes, I remember the feeling of the belt in my hand, the way I’d made his voice break so many times before, and I decide.

            Deftly, confidently, I undo the top button of his trousers. He doesn’t stop me, only looks away. I continue, rather roughly, pulling him to his feet in order to tug the material from his hips. He sways, but stays upright. The source of the blood becomes clear as soon as I get the trousers around his knees—a long, ragged gash along the outside of his thigh. It isn’t deep enough to require a tourniquet, but it badly needs bandaging. Stepping away to find fresh bandages I give him a furtive look. Out of the corner of my eye he looks pathetic—a beaten, vulnerable blur sitting stiffly on a bed in his undershorts. But when I look right at him, the tiny details come into focus. The way he holds his chin, still at a defiant tilt. The proud set of his shoulders. The cold, undaunted, vengeful—if a little hazy—blue of his eyes. Even now, he is terrible. Even now, he is beautiful. 

            _Beautiful_. I’d thought it before I could stop myself. I shudder.

            I put myself to work mopping up the blood, cleaning the wound, bandaging the cut. Tommy sits quietly, only sharp intakes of breath betraying his pain. When I’m done I stand over him once again, slightly dazed. Instead of hurting him, I’ve bandaged his wounds. Instead of punishing him, I’ve shown concern. And he has given me nothing in return. I’m just remembering what he’d said about confession when he speaks.

            “Do you remember when we took those horses my father had stolen and rode them up to Bordesley Green to see the gardens?” His voice is soft and ragged. I nod.

            “They looked at us like we were trash. Just a couple of dirty boys from Small Heath riding stolen horses. And they were right.” He raises his dark brows. “But look at us now.” The faintest shadow of a smile turns up his lips. “I am glad,” he speaks the words deliberately, “of who I am, and what I’ve done. I’m building something, Freddie. Karl and Finn will have it better than we ever did.”

            I stare at him blankly.

            “Is that all you have to say to me?”

            He just holds my gaze, his pupils deep black tunnels in circles of ice. I take a step closer, drawn to him, to those endless tunnels. Before I know what I’m doing, my hands are knotted in his blood-matted hair. Running my fingers across the smooth stubble of his shaven temples, down his bruised throat, I feel fear and longing trickle through me, mingling where they pool in my stomach. Do I dare?

            When I press his face into my hips, and he feels me hard and urgent against his mouth, he doesn’t pull away. When I free my cock and hold his chin in my hands and press the tip to his lips, he accepts it obediently. Sitting on the low bed in the dim light, he lets me grip his hair and thrust deep into his throat, his eyes finally, mercifully closed. When I finish, I let him spit. I pour a glass of whiskey and he washes out his mouth, eyes still closed. He lowers his head into his hands.

            I sit on the bed beside him, not touching him, dazed. I can see the prints of my hands on his shoulders where I gripped the already bruised flesh, uncaring in my ecstasy. His lip is bleeding fresh. Finally, he raises his head and looks at me. It is a look of anguish—the kind of look months of beatings hadn’t been able to wring from him.

            In the warm, smoky room, I shiver. I rise, back away, and run from that look, even as some primal force draws me to it. To him.

            I leave him there, bandaged but broken.

            I tell myself: he wanted it.


	3. Chapter 3

Days go by. Weeks. Ada comes and goes, always bearing news. Some of it’s good: Polly bought Karl a new pram, profits are up. Some of it’s bad: the coppers have it out for communists, better lay low.

            Some of it makes me shiver.

            “Hear about the bodies found down on Baker Street this morning? Faces pounded in with a shovel. They’d got cigarette burns, too. Funny, that, isn’t it? Tommy won’t say a thing about it, but I just know it was them. Arthur’s like a mad dog these days.”

            I know more than I should. The image of Tommy’s long, white fingers presses upon my mind, and I shudder at their violence.

            “Tommy says you have his protection. Don’t worry.”

            _His protection_. My heart twists within me.

            When I think about that night, I’m afraid and exhilarated and disgusted all at once. When I close my eyes to sleep, I’m back in the tunnels. The quiet scraping comes closer and closer, and I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t turn. I don’t want to know what those eyes are saying. I pray for the silence to break, for the strangling, screaming chaos I know is supposed to follow, but the scraping just goes on and on. We wait in fear, and I can’t turn to him.

            He’s given me his dreams as if they’re a disease, forcing me to relive what I’d been trying these years to forget. Some part of him is stuck in France, and now some part of me is stuck there with him, lured back, all too willing.

            One ordinary day I pass him in the street. I don’t see him until he’s close enough to touch. There’s a flash of pale, unreadable blue, a brush of a shoulder, and then he’s gone again. I don’t follow.

            He doesn’t send for me. Maybe if I hadn’t done it, I think. Or, maybe if I hadn’t run away. If I’d stayed… to do what? Comfort him? Hurt him more? I’m replaying that night in my mind, every second, and even in my mind I can’t do a single thing differently. I’m a puppet, tugged by invisible strings.

            I pour my frustration into my speeches, urging my comrades at the BSA to strike. Even then, in those moments that used to be purely mine, I feel his eyes on me.

            He doesn’t send for me.

            He doesn’t send for me.

            He sends for me.

 

 

            It’s a hotel again—this time not an abandoned one. Room 313, the slip of paper says. I recognize Tommy’s own, careful handwriting. I chant the number over in my head with each step, trying not to think about what this might mean. Trying not to think. With every deep breath I make an attempt at courage, gasping for the confidence I once felt. I drink in only empty air.

            When I enter he’s standing before the room’s dull mirror, cap off, hands resting gently on the tall dresser. He doesn’t turn his head, only motions briefly for me to close the door. I obey.

            There’s no smoke in the air this time. His body is whole, strong. I wait for him to speak, no more able to reach out and touch him than if a wall of solid stone stood between us. Finally, he turns toward me. It’s all I can do not to look away. In spite of myself, I break the unbearable silence.

            “What do you want, Tommy?”

            “Freddie…” he trails off softly. He clears his throat, tries again. “What do _you_ want, Freddie?” Something flickers in his eyes, unreadable.

            What _do_ I want? My eyes drift over Tommy’s body unbidden, lingering on the lines of his shoulders, his jaw, his hands. But I can’t say it. Once again I feel small in front of him. He sighs deeply, his eyes fixed on mine, never moving. Stepping back deliberately he sits down on the flat, wide bed tucked beneath the window. For a moment, the present and past overlap, and I can see him as he was when last I saw him: beaten and lost. But then my eyes adjust to the light, and I see the man, not the silhouette. I see his pride and his power, and I am afraid.

            “What are you afraid of?” he asks, leaning back and staring at the blank, water-stained ceiling. Without his eyes on me I catch my breath.

            “I’m not afraid,” I lie. I take a step forward, to him.

            “I won’t fight you.”

            “I know.”

            “You do still want to hurt me.”

            His tone is self-assured, but his eyes flicker to mine doubtfully. Deliberately, he raises one dark brow.

             “Or have I served my penance? Have I satisfied the righteous anger of Freddie Thorne?”

            He’s mocking me. I step closer, letting my shadow fall over him. He looks at me, eyes knowing.

            “No,” he says decidedly.

            I hesitate. “It’s been weeks, Tommy. Fuck. You never—”   

             “I’ve sent for you now,” he says, lying back and folding his hands behind his head. He has his cool, calm mask on. I want to wrench it from him; the urge wells up without warning, surging in my blood.

            “Not here,” I say roughly.

            “I’ll be quiet,” he promises, eyes flickering to mine, holding them. I recognize the look—the bold, brave look—and understand. Tommy Shelby is afraid.

            “I’m not going to fuck you, Tommy,” I blurt, surprising my own ears. A blush immediately warms my cheeks, but he doesn’t even blink.

            “Do what you want, Freddie,” he says, voice soft and low. I shudder, but the urge to run has left me. I pick up his cap, turn it over in my hands. I notice a bottle of whisky on the table in the corner. Tommy follows my gaze, uncorks the bottle, pours two glasses. He downs his in one gulp, but not before ripples mar its surface, betraying the slight tremor in his hand. The sight gives me more courage than the whisky.

             “I _will_ do what I fucking want,” I say, softly now. “And I will do it where I want, when I want. You don’t call our meetings anymore.”

            “Fine.”

            “You’ll leave my comrades alone. You won’t turn us in to the coppers when it suits your fancy or lines your pockets,” I spit.

            “Done.”

            “And you’ll give me your protection, when the police come knocking.”

            “You have it already,” Tommy replies evenly.

            “I want it in blood.”

            It’s a rash, unnecessary demand, and I know it. What’s more, it goes against my every principle. All the times I’ve denounced the Peaky Blinders, all the times I’ve tried to separate myself from that world—slowly, the things that made me who I was after the war are blurring, blending into his dream, his empire. It’s not about principles anymore. It’s Tommy’s lust for power…or is it mine? Whatever it is, it stains my hands, coloring everything I touch.

            Tommy just nods. Fishing in my pocket, I draw out a crumpled pamphlet. I smooth the faded paper, pluck the old-fashioned quill from the room’s cramped desk, and set them before him. Tearing the razor free from the stitching binding it to his cap, I toss it onto the table with the rest.

            Unhesitating, he draws the blade across the soft part of his palm. In his neat, deliberate hand, he writes:

            “By order of Thomas Shelby, the communist agitator Freddie Thorne and his associates shall receive the protection of the Peaky Blinders from this day forward.”

            Mechanically, he signs and dates the macabre document, then offers it to me, injured palm upturned. I let the paper fall to the floor, instead taking the hand.

            Emotionless though his eyes appear, Tommy’s hand is warm. Like a small child overcome with curiosity I press upon the wound, looking for a reaction. He rewards me with a sharp, barely audible breath. _Not enough_.

             Roughly, too quickly, I slip free the buttons of his spotless shirt. There, above his heart, the cluster of small, round scars stares back at me.

            “Fancy a smoke?” I ask, tone light, holding out my hand. Recognition flickers in his eyes like torchlight in the inky black of the tunnels; still, he slides the pack out of his pocket.

            I free one cigarette, noting the brand: Black Cat, Tommy’s wartime favorite. For the briefest moment, I see him huddled in the trenches, poring over one of the French phrasebooks they’d send over with the cigarettes. He always read more, knew more than the rest of us.

            When I hold it out to him he takes the cigarette between his fingers—more gingerly than usual, perhaps. I strike a match. Once it’s lit, I let him take one deep drag before I pluck the burning ember from his hand. Circling the bed, I come to stand behind him. Almost gently, I press his shoulders back against the mattress. One eager hand traces the lines of his jaw and neck, thrilling at the quickening of the pulse beneath my fingertips. Slowly, he exhales the smoke. I breathe it in, hungry.

            War taught me to strike without warning. It didn’t matter whether you were shooting an enemy or digging the bullet from a wound; the best way was the quick way. Struggle was messy and painful. Waiting was worse.

            So I don’t wait. With my left hand, I tangle my fingers in his hair, forcing his chin up. With the other, I press the burning end of Tommy’s cigarette into the first of the pink new scars.

            True to his word, Tommy makes barely a sound. His fists grasp the bedsheets, knuckles white; his breath comes in short gasps; he closes his eyes tightly; his jaw clenches. For a moment, I’m sure he’s about to spring upright, and I’m bracing my arm across his throat, determined to hold him down. But he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t cry out.

            Five times I hold the ember to his flesh, erasing the old marks one by one, replacing them with my own. Five times he stifles his cries, biting his lip, then his knuckle in the effort to keep silent. It’s a tormented rhythm: his body strains and relaxes, knuckles whiten and release, breath catches and returns. I’m a musician, and Tommy is my instrument.

            When it’s over he lies still, eyes closed, head cradled in my arms. I recognize the exhaustion that settles into a person’s veins after great pain, watch it lift him away from this bed, this room. I remember the feeling myself. It’s a different kind of tiredness—a weight like lead in every limb, contradicted by a floating in the brain. Relief is not merely the absence of pain. In the moments after the pain fades, simply being—simply existing—tastes inexplicably good, the way the plainest fare savors of honey to a starving man.

            _Is that why he does it? To feel those moments of relief, more potent and sweet than any drug?_

            I wonder.

            For what feels like hours, I remain motionless, kneeling on the floor behind him, my arms lying lightly round his head and shoulders, holding him where I once held him down. I watch him in a trance, his slow breaths the only motion in the room.

            When he finally opens his eyes, I see peace. The depths are calm. Nothing struggles to the surface; nothing flickers. The ice of Tommy’s gaze, the frozen shell keeping those waters still, has melted. Underneath is only clear, calm, pale blue—the blue eyes of the boy I knew long ago. Liquid, bright. Capable of laughter. Capable of tears.

             Slowly the city, which had receded the moment I touched fire to flesh, returns. The sounds of the street below lap at our ears like waves: cartwheels on the cobblestones, shouts and cries, hollow laughter. In the rooms next door creaky bedsprings sing their age-old song. I become conscious of my skin where it touches Tommy’s, conscious of my knees where they ache against the wooden floor.

            Still, I wait for him to break the spell. When finally he sighs, I withdraw my arms and struggle stiffly to my feet. He pushes himself to a seated position, sitting tall, proudly. I may only be imagining the slight softness of his shoulders, the open palms of his hands.

            When he turns a questioning look to me, I know what he is asking. Desire pools in my stomach, inexorable. I step toward him. Unable to resist, I run my fingers across the rough stubble of his temples, along the smooth line of his jaw. He looks up at me this time, the tiniest sliver of the boy he was still lingering in his gaze. I can’t do it.

            Instead I seize his jaw a little roughly, bringing my lips to his. It’s a hard kiss, fleeting in its violence. His lips part willingly, and it’s all I can do to pull away, turn away from the ways I could break him.

“Not today,” I say. He nods the slightest of nods, and I spend the walk home tormenting myself, wondering.

Was it relief in his eyes? Or disappointment?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so ridiculously long! I was super close to finishing it, but then exams and the beginning of summer got in my way. Also, more than halfway through I had a new idea and had to change a lot of what I'd already written. But I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it! :)

 

            I spend the next day tormented by anticipation, knowing it’s me who’ll summon Tommy now. I’ll decide when and where we meet, what we do. From dawn to dusk I walk the streets confident in the knowledge that in an hour’s time I could have the king of Small Heath under my fingertips.

            But in the end, though lust curls my fists, though I ache with waiting, I don’t send for him. By the evening anxiety has set in. Tommy always chose before. The streets crawl with his men, with coppers on his payroll. He controls the dockyards and slums, shifting the people like pawns on a chessboard. He made sure we weren’t caught. He silenced the whispers.

            I can do neither of these things. I realize, not for the first time, how much Tommy carries. Those of us standing in his shadow simply take for granted that he will have a plan, that he knows everything, sees everything, controls everything. When Thomas Shelby takes the reins, you may be angry. You may resent the proud, sure set of his shoulders as he takes control. But you know his hands are steady. Though he turns down many a winding, dangerous road, you know he’s got a map of the world in his head. You know he’s headed somewhere grander and more beautiful than anywhere you’ve been before. And, though he plows over villains and innocents alike in his race toward that destination, you know that if he loves you, he’d die before he’d let you fall.

            _If he loves you_.

            Tommy loves his family. Of this, I have no doubt. It’s a love revealed less in tender words than in fire and pride. He has his own dreams, of course. The smiling boy I once knew has become a man of expensive taste and ardent ambition. Clearly, he demands more out of life than an existence spent slaving for the BSA bosses could give him. Yet, he’s never been the type to climb alone. An overreacher, certainly. Selfish, undoubtedly. But, for all that, he’s still here, breathing the ashy stench of poverty. For all his reserve, I realize, he is a social creature, bound by love and pride to a whole network of weaker beings. He is, and must be, Sergeant Major Thomas Shelby. He must provide. He must protect. And this time, he is determined to get all his men out alive.

            In brief moments of solitude I unroll the crumpled contract, which I’d plucked from the floor in my exit. I study his handwriting, watching the letters fade from bright crimson to rusty brown. _My protection_. He had given it freely, in blood. How much, or how little, could that mean?

            Another day passes, and night finds me following him, dogging his footsteps at a distance, waiting in alleyways. _It’s too soon_ , I tell myself—too soon to send for him. Yet I can’t stay away.

            The nights blur together. The streets of Small Heath become a dark, ashy map crisscrossed with the threads drawn by his brisk, confident steps—crimson lines connecting the points that make up his existence. The Garrison. The soot-covered flats where his bookies ply their trade. The brothel on Keen street. The tiny room with the yellow windows and smoke-stained walls where Tommy sleeps—always alone.

            I barely sleep anymore. Ada thinks it’s Bolshevik business, and she isn’t entirely wrong: trouble is brewing. When I can tear my eyes away from Tommy I see the looks, hear the whispered warnings. But when I’m near him the danger fades. Self-preservation gives way to deepest lust.

            It puts me off my guard.

            The day it happens, I’ve followed Tommy out of Small Heath into greater Birmingham. From the moment I set foot on the road out I know I’m playing with fire. Whatever Tommy is doing, wherever he’s going, I’m not supposed to know. Still, he draws me on.

            It can’t be too far, or he would have taken his car. That’s what I tell myself, at least, when my worn out shoes begin to rub and pinch. I stay a block or so behind him, heart hammering at the thought of that head turning, those pale eyes meeting mine. But Tommy never turns. He walks straight ahead, purpose and confidence written in every line of his body.

            I watch him greet a tall, bespectacled man, see him laugh a short, congenial laugh. A new business partner? I know so little of Tommy’s affairs that it’s pointless to speculate. The pair enters a greasy café and I remain outside, perusing the street stands with my back turned. I’m so absorbed in the task of catching glimpses of the café door in reflections—the shiny metal of a new car’s carriage, the mirror affixed to the hat stall—that I don’t see the coppers until they’re on top of me. There are three of them: I haven’t got a chance.

            It’s all over too quickly, and not quickly enough. As rough hands push my head down, forcing me inside the police wagon, Tommy steps out on the street. Our eyes meet.

            _He knows_.

            His writ of protection lies wrinkled in my pocket, useless. I’ve wandered outside his empire, outside his control.

            I wonder how they found me. A year ago, I realize, I would have blamed Tommy. Now, that possibility is the furthest from my mind. We have gone from being friends to comrades to enemies to… what, exactly? There are no words for what we are.

            What I am, though, is fucked. In a daze I stumble from the wagon into the jail yard, pass from handcuffs into leg irons and chains. What will Ada think when I don’t come home? _Tommy will tell her_ , I think. For a moment, I imagine the words on his lips. Will his voice break the way it does sometimes on words that twist his heart? Will it sound just a little less regal, a little more weary?

            She will blame him, like we all blamed him the night Karl was born, the last time I was dragged away to rot in a prison cell. _He was guilty then_ , I think, but there’s the slightest hint of doubt. Were we wrong to mistrust him then? Am I wrong to trust him now?

            They come for me in the evening, find the piece of paper deep in my pocket. I was expecting it: my wrists are chafed raw with the intervening hours’ attempts to grasp that tiny paper, the urge to tear it up. When they find it, they laugh. Tommy’s name means nothing here. _Not yet_.

            I close my eyes and take the blows, the spit, the laughter and the names. Commie, red bastard, bolshie bitch. Their words are nothing compared to the names I’m calling myself. What in the name of all that is holy had made me forget my cause, made me waltz out of hiding with a price on my head?

            When they leave me bleeding on the straw-strewn floor of an empty cell, I know it’s only the beginning. There’s nothing I can tell them, of course. My comrades are careful. No one of us knows enough to put the rest in danger. Our most recent plans will be scrapped the moment word of my arrest gets out, the dates and participants changed. I’ll have nothing to say, nothing to stop the raining blows. It’s supposed to be a comfort. Like so many before me, I’ll die a martyr to my cause. Still, my hands tremble.

            I lie awake, lust replaced by naked fear. Shivering against the stone floor, I reach for the torn slip of paper where it lies trampled and forgotten. I clutch it in filthy, bleeding hands, press it to my lips like some unholy communion.

            _This is my body. This is my blood_.

            But Tommy can’t hear my prayers. No one can: Tommy taught me that. Funny, that I’d choose for my savior a man whose lips haven’t formed a prayer since he wiped the French mud from his boots.

            I hear his voice in my head:

            “We’ve seen hell, Freddie. What more is there to fear?”

            “Death,” I’d said. “The end.”

            “Is that all? Well, then, I will drink life to the lees,” he’d replied, smiling sadly, his voice a low sort of music. I knew without asking that he was quoting some poem—some high, fanciful verse I’d never read, nor cared to read.

            For a moment I let myself remember France—really remember it. The stinking pools of poison and human fragments, pits and craters littered with young, able bodies pierced through and torn asunder. The springy feel of corpses underfoot, carpeting the trenches, lurking just beneath the surface, fingers and toes poking through the soil. The rain of shells so fast and thick it faded from a drumroll to one long, continuous roar—white noise hanging like lines of clean linen above the dirt and stench of men dead and dying and about to die. The mornings we went over the top and watched our friends—boys who’d rolled marbles in the street with us, scrapped with us in childish feuds—torn to pieces one by one by an unfeeling, unrelenting stream of German machine gun fire and artillery. Then doing it again, and again, until no one was left and the Small Heath Rifles were a bloody, scattered mess rotting in no man’s land, so very far from home. The nights in the trenches, listening to the sounds of the dying where they lay bleeding in no man’s land. The suicidal urge to scramble up over the top and go to them, if only to ease their passing. The days spent in the tunnels, out of sunlight’s reach, feeling the walls of earth shrink in upon us, listening for the quiet scraping, always afraid. The final, ominous tap before the wall gave way; the desperate, barbaric struggles in the dark; the feeling of being already dead and buried beneath the heavy, stifling earth—all these things haunt us even now.

            I wonder if, by looking in the right place at the right time, I could have caught the moment when the light left Tommy’s eyes. I wonder which time I heard him laugh was the last real laugh, which smile was the last real smile. My own fear gripped me so hard back then that I never stopped to think. That was the beauty of war, really: there wasn’t time to notice how the shells blasted ancient forests to bits, or whether the farmhouse you’d glimpsed on the march in was still standing on the march out, or when the joy left a person’s heart forever. I do remember once, near the beginning, watching him stand by helplessly as a horse thrashed in agony, choking on the gas, its legs tangled in barbed wire. I remember how he started toward it with hands outstretched only to back away again, powerless. I was the one to put a bullet in its brain. Tommy just stood there, in his eyes a look of utter confusion.

            I remember, too, how his once-bright eyes seemed to darken every time they ordered us over the top. Sometimes he even had to give the order himself, relaying it for some wounded or absent commissioned officer. But it was never _his_ order. There were times near the end—mere split-seconds—when I thought he’d tell us to turn the other way—to run, king and country be damned. But he did his duty. We all did. We watched regiment after regiment charge at the German lines only to die screaming, and we followed them, and that was simply the way it was. Eventually, Tommy’s mask fell into place. By the time we set eyes on Small Heath again, Tommy’s face had become unrecognizable, unreadable. He had always been different—smarter, well-spoken, a natural leader—but the war turned his intelligence to cold calculation. Tommy left home a charming youth with a quick, easy smile. He changed: we all did. But what he became was unlike anything, anyone I’d ever seen.

            Nearly every night in France I wrote letters to my mother, sure that each letter would be my last. Tommy wrote them too, I know—to Polly and Ada and Finn. I wonder what those letters said, what words a man like Thomas Shelby bequeathed to those he loved. We were so sure of death then. We saw it take everyone around us. We saw the steel and lead and gas fill the air and didn’t just fear, but _knew_ that death was waiting. I don’t think a single infantryman at Verdun or at the Somme expected to live through it. But we did, Tommy and me.

            I’m about to die now, alone, and I realize that what my short future holds—the beatings I know will follow, and maybe worse—can’t compare to the prolonged, bloody nightmare we endured those years ago in France. But Tommy isn’t here.

            When the war was over, he threw his medals in the Cut. I’d have done the same if I’d had any medals to throw. Years spent watching my comrades die pointless deaths had taught me to question God. Enduring a trapped, fearful existence with German machine guns aimed at my face and the pistol of an officer at my back had taught me to abhor earthly authority as well. I entered the war under old, romantic illusions of patriotism and left it consumed by a newer, harsher idealism— the drive to break the machine that had caused so much fear and pain.

            But I’d never understood exactly what happened to Tommy. I knew somewhere in France the light in his eyes went out. I knew the smile of the boy I’d known faded into something else—not sternness, exactly, but the cool, confident neutrality of an expert gambler. I knew that all his simple dreams for a long, happy life withered before they ever bloomed. But what replaced that light, that smile, and those dreams for him baffled me. Repulsed by the change, I withdrew. At the same time, Tommy shut me out—shut out everyone, everything. I became an outsider looking in, and in the years that followed I saw in him what I imagine most people did, still do, and always will. If he is remembered, it will be for his greed, his blind ambition. The name of Thomas Shelby will be synonymous with ruthlessness. Fierce pride. The need to win, to own, to control.

            But underneath all that, another self still gasped for breath. The need to protect, to love and be loved, still burned within him. There still existed moments, perhaps many moments, when Tommy didn’t want to be the one in control. Moments when he wanted, _needed_ to hand over the reins. Moments when he needed to be human again.

             I didn’t know it a year ago—didn’t even know it for certain after all beatings I dealt him, all the fragments of his soul he bared for me in the past months—but sitting here in chains I know it now. It was there. The way his eyes flickered with long-buried, agonizing guilt. The way he responded to pain, seeking it out, drinking it in. The longing to be punished, the low, halting confessions, and the search, however twisted, for human connection.

            These thoughts file through my head in the darkness, sorting and labeling themselves in ways they couldn’t have done mere hours ago, when lust swam hazily in my brain. Fear and death may be associated with darkness, but I find they cast a new, stark, bright light. I see my lust for what it really is—sadism, fueled by my conflicting hatred and idolization of a man I’ve stopped being able to understand. _A man I loved._

            I can admit it to myself only in the past-tense, as a man condemned, already dead. What kind of love I cannot say. Maybe after all there is only one kind. I only know that here, at the end, I want him close. It almost wouldn’t matter why he was here, what role he filled.

            I imagine him playing the part of a priest performing last rites, or a lover holding my hand as I breathed my last. That would be good.

            Or, I imagine him lying here beside me, bruised and bloody, the same pain wracking both our bodies. I imagine death, which had spared us together in France, finding us together here. That, to me, would feel right.

            I imagine him standing over me, arm raised, poised to deal the final blow. Even that I wouldn’t mind so much as this aloneness. It would only matter that he was here, here for me to see and touch and try one last time to understand. Even now, with only days or maybe only hours left, my mind will not rest until it has untangled Tommy’s existence and made peace with it.

            Unfortunately, my mind is not my own for very long. I don’t know whether it’s day or night when they pull me from my cell, only that my lips are dry, my head clouded with the kind of thirst only blood loss can induce. I’m not sure how long they question me, only that the glare of the room’s single, bare lightbulb makes my head pound, and the raised voices blur together into one long, throbbing litany:

 _whoaretheywherearetheywhatdoyouknowtellusnowgetoffeasytellustellustellus_.

            I say nothing: my jaws feel wired shut. Sometimes there’s a glass of water swimming in my vision, blue and cool and inviting, but it’s not enough. I have nothing to say.

            When I feel my eyelids begin to fall I let them, though they’re never allowed to remain shut for long.

            It gets worse, and I retreat further and further from the sounds of the blows and my own screams. I’m in a different room now. It’s dark. There are no more questions. Or, rather, the questions now are understood. _Give them something useful, and it might stop_. But every syllable that leaps to my tongue is useless; every half-formed word claws its way back down my throat, unworthy to be uttered.

            Finally, when every nerve seems on fire and life itself has become a series of pain-soaked, never-ending seconds, I expel those useless words in barely-coherent sobs. I can’t help it. If I knew more, I’d tell it. I would say anything, do anything. But even then it doesn’t stop. Dimly I realize they must have other, newer intelligence. My knowledge, such as it is, won’t earn my even a moment’s reprieve.

            It won’t be long now, I tell myself. My utter uselessness laid bare, my battered body living evidence of illegal brutality, I won’t be allowed to come to trial. I won’t be allowed goodbyes or dignity. A noose among witnesses is too good a death for me. That’s not how this ends. I know that.

            So when I hear his voice, I’m sure I’m delirious. Still, I can’t stop myself from murmuring his name, hoping it will be the last on my lips. I’m past caring what jeers and taunts speaking Tommy’s name now, here, in such a tone will earn me. Before I know it, I’m saying it over and over again until it no longer sounds like a word or a name at all.

            At first I don’t notice that no one is laughing. I’m waiting for the next, the final blow. I’m ready.

            It doesn’t come. Silence fills the room, and for the briefest moment I can hear the patter of my own blood as it falls to the floor, dripping like dew from my hands, my lips, my bent and twisted knees.

            “That man is mine.”

            The words reach me from very, very far away.

            The tension at my wrists gives way amid a buzzing, muttering sound. I crumple, but a pair of warm hands catches me, holds me upright. I don’t understand until later that these are his hands, that it is his strength propelling my staggering form out of that room, beyond those doors, and into the hazy afternoon. My eyes are clouded with blood and tears; my mouth feels swollen and parched; I move as if in a dream.

            I don’t know how he gets me into his car. He is alone: that much I realize as the motion created by the dilapidated road beneath us jolts me into full consciousness. I’m in the passenger’s seat, hunched down, whether from pain or in an effort to hide I’m not certain.

            “Alright, Freddie?”

            Tommy’s tone, as usual, gives nothing away.

            My first attempt to reply results in a choking cough, the second in a barely audible whisper. Finally, I manage to get the words out: “Don’t know. Can’t tell.”

            “Keep still,” Tommy advises grimly. I nod. Even that tiny motion sends my head swimming.

            The roads become smoother, and I drift in and out of the blackness swirling at the edges of my vision. Fuzzily I string together questions in my head, but not one makes it past my lips. It’s as though my voice has dried up.

            When we reach our destination, Tommy carries me through the front door like a child. _Or a bride_. I giggle feverishly at the thought, then laugh even harder at the thought of my own state—how utterly unhinged I must seem. Tommy barely seems to notice: he sets me gently on a hard wooden cot, then bars the door and spends what feels like an hour staring through the narrow window at the road. I remember the crunch of gravel and, taking a deep, painful breath, sense the openness of country air.

            Finally Tommy turns from the window, apparently satisfied we haven’t been followed. His face and finery smeared with my blood, he stands looking at me for nearly as long as he’d watched the road. I sneak bleary glances at him, fascinated. His expression is blank, neutral, and yet behind his eyes I can see the gears turning. _Tommy isn’t sure what to do next_ , I realize wonderingly. _Or_ , a more ominous voice in the back of my head whispers, _he knows what he must do, but he can’t bring himself to do it_.

            Finally, I find my voice.

            “How?”

            Tommy drags a simple wooden chair from the corner, sits before my bed, and lights a cigarette. I watch him cup his hand to shield the match—an old wartime habit that has followed him into the still-aired rooms and stagnant streets of home. The flame burns bright for the instant that is its life, giving his face an unearthly quality as it lights up the dim room. Then he takes a deep drag and pungent smoke wafts across the bed, strangely comforting.

            “Do you remember,” he begins, “the man I met at the café?”

            I nod. Even through the blood and dirt obscuring my face I’m certain he can see my shame.

            “I’m sorry—” I begin, but his unreadable stare unnerves me, and I falter. “I remember,” I rasp hoarsely.

            “You know who he is?”

            “Some scum or another, to be meeting with the likes of you,” I reply with half-hearted venom. I’m surprised when Tommy almost smiles.

            “You might say that,” he affirms. “You, of all people. The man you saw, the man I met, was Hampton Gates.”

            He’s watching my face closely for my reaction. He’s not disappointed.

            “Gates, the steelworks boss?” I ask pointlessly, voice strained. I feel sick. 

            “He’s the one.” Tommy’s eyes are dead serious now. “He’s running an opium operation on the side. Purest stuff in Birmingham. Has the local coppers on his payroll, too. And he hasn’t been too happy about the rabble-rousing going on in his factory, last couple months. Workers making demands, asking questions. Bad for business, he says.”

            Panic rises in my throat. I stare into Tommy’s eyes, disbelieving. The pieces click into place.

            “You sold me out,” I rasp, struggling to rise. “You fucking bastard! You—”

            Choking on my rage, standing unsteadily, I plunge my aching fingers in my pocket, pull out the crumpled, bloodstained document. I hold it in trembling hands, practically waving it in his face. For a moment something flickers in his eyes—something like hurt. Then, almost gently, he seizes my wrist, pushes me back down.

            “I gave you my protection.” His voice is as low—as secretly, steadily heartbroken—as ever.

            For a long time we stare at each other. I’m breathing heavily, my damaged fists clenching and unclenching with the impracticable desire to crush his throat. He’s still, almost too still, too calm. Only the smears of my blood dotting his white shirtsleeves and streaking his face signal the strangeness of his situation.

            “What was the agreement?” I sneer finally, hoping to inflict with words the pain I cannot mete out physically. “My life in exchange for a share in the trade? Or,” I add viciously, “was it even less? A few ounces for personal use? My life—” I pound my bloody fist on the cot’s wooded slats “—for Thomas Shelby’s sweet dreams?”

            I’m so angry I’m almost hissing. I rise again, pepper Tommy’s head and shoulders with feeble, stinging blows. This time he doesn’t stop me, only looks at me, barely flinching, until I’m too angry to look at him, too angry to meet those eyes. I stagger to the window to gaze, unseeing, upon the landscape. Outside, it’s spring. You forget that sometimes in the city.

            “There was no deal,” he murmurs exhaustedly.

            I don’t turn.

            “I didn’t know you’d followed me. Didn’t know Gates had a price on your head until it was too late.”

            I hear his footsteps behind me, hesitating strangely.

            “Freddie. Freddie, look at me.”

            Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I stiffen.

            “I gave you my protection. I gave you my word, Freddie.”

            “Fuck your word,” I retort bitterly. “Clearly, it’s not worth the pot I piss in.” I turn to face him, wanting to see the hurt in his eyes as I go on. “Should’ve known better. You poison everything you touch. Everyone knows it,” I whisper cruelly. “You’re a fucking liar, and a double-crosser, and I’m a fucking fool—” my voice breaks “—for thinking I could be the exception.”

            With every word his face becomes a little less open, a little colder, his eyes a little further away. Still, he places a hand on each of my shoulders, almost shaking me.

            “There. Was. No. Deal.”

 His voice is low, rough, insistent. He isn’t pleading, exactly. I don’t think Tommy is capable of that. But the undercurrent of desperation beneath the words surprises me.

            “You’ve fucked me over before,” I accuse. “Are you really thick enough to think I’ll believe you now?”

            “I didn’t.”

            “Didn’t’ what?”

            “It wasn’t me who told the coppers where you were, the night Karl was born.” He speaks the words deliberately, but not convincingly; he’s looking down, away.

            I laugh a derisive laugh.

            “Who was it, then?” I sneer. “Polly? Or maybe Ada telephoned Inspector Campbell in between contractions? My money is on that new sister-in-law of yours. Who knows what goes through women’s heads? Likely she _wanted_ to spend her wedding night consoling a hysterical woman with a screaming—”

            “It was Grace.”

            Slowly his eyes find mine, and I see: he is telling the truth. The emptiness in his eyes cannot be anything but real.

            “You never said,” I mutter stupidly.

            “I wasn’t sure. Not at first.”

            And when he did know, when he was sure she had betrayed him, he couldn’t. He doesn’t need to say the words to make me understand.

            “I broke you out. I made it right, for you and for Ada.”

            I nod. He had. He’d risked his life to right a betrayal not his own. He’d taken all the shame and anger upon himself without uttering a word in his own defense.

            But he’s defending himself now. _Because he cares. He cares what I think of him_. With this realization the room seems suddenly to brighten, and every bruise aches a little less.

            A hundred questions leap to my lips—questions needing answers, and soon. But right now, in spite of the pain that seems to seep from my very bones, I only want to replace the emptiness in those frozen, grief-stricken eyes with something warm, something bright. I can’t do that. I know it. The man those eyes belong to, the man who lets me hit him without flinching, whose cigarettes don’t quite mask the headier scent of opium on his clothes—he is broken, and I’m no healer.

            Still, I close the distance between us, resting my forehead against his, holding his hands in mine. I close my eyes, and though I sway, he holds me steady.

            _There was no deal_ , Tommy said, repeated, drilled into my skull. I believe him. There was no deal. But there is now. How else could he free me? If, indeed, that is what he has done.

            In a moment, I will ask. In a moment, he will tell me. My life is in his hands. But for now we lean upon each other, and I am just slightly taller, and nothing since the war has felt so good.


	5. Chapter 5

My reprieve is short lived. As the rush of my anger begins to fade, pain seeps back into every joint. The air itself feels rough, as if the slightest breeze could bruise the exposed skin of my swollen wrists, my raw back. My jaw begins to stiffen, and I realize my nose has almost certainly set crooked. Soon I can barely open my eyes.

            I lean on Tommy. He helps me back to the cot where I lie still, exhausted. With my eyes closed I can almost feel the blows raining down as if they’d never stopped. I have to bite my tongue to keep from whimpering.

            I don’t have to pry my eyes open to know that Tommy sympathizes: we’ve both been in similar states countless times before. Like me, he knows the beating itself isn’t even the worst part. The worst is when you can’t eat for a week, or a month. The worst is when a bone sets wrong and has to be re-broken and broken again, until some hack of a surgeon (if you’re lucky) or some hammer-wielding brother-in-arms (if you’re not) can get it right.

            It’s the way one cracked rib punishes every moment of laughter with a stab of gasping pain until you’ve learned your lesson: don’t even smile. It’s the ache that never leaves the arch of your foot or the small of your back. It’s the way you can’t stop clenching your jaw at night, sometimes for years, and it’s the fact that you’re not sure if it’s pain, or fear, or just the damaged joint that makes you grind your teeth together when you’re alone.

            Lying perfectly still I hear the sound of a pump outside, the splash of water in a tin pail. Footsteps, drops of water on the floor, rummaging in cupboards. Then warm hands, a soft cloth, cold water, and Tommy murmuring the way he sometimes does to soothe a skittish horse. It’s Romany: he must think I’m asleep. I would give nearly anything, I realize, to know what he’s saying.

            I remember the cruel slurs that always found their way to Tommy’s ears, even when we were boys. Among the shouts of “ragamuffin” and “no-good lout” aimed at us all were angry, hateful words always directed at him especially. Words that clouded his young, bright eyes with confusion—words that must, eventually, have sunk into his heart.

            We both lived in poverty, it’s true. Our childhoods had that in common. It’s also true that since the war I’ve learned to deflect the sneers and name-calling that follow communists like me from flat to flat, pub to pub. I’ve been turned away from honest work, driven out of tenements. I’ve been arrested, beaten. _Nearly killed, now_.

            But, in some deeply complicated way, I chose that path. Tommy never chose to be born with Romany blood. He hadn’t chosen to grow up hearing his mother called a fucking gypsy bitch, hadn’t chosen to bear the distrustful stares of every shopkeeper, the snide remarks and drunken taunts of bitter Englishmen and women—fellow denizens of the home he’d fight for, when the war began. 

            The words he murmurs in my ear are beautiful; I wonder no longer that horses always calm under his touch. Tommy speaks two languages, I realize—three, if you count the French he learned in the trenches. And yet the world would fault him for it. It’s the reason he saves these musical words for horses and unconscious men.

            I lie motionless, resisting the urge to flinch when even Tommy’s gentlest touches ignite sparks of pain. I listen to words I cannot understand being spoken in that familiar, low, lilting, ragged voice until I feel myself sinking through the wooden slats, slipping through the warm hands, coming to rest somewhere dark and cool.

 

 

            I wake to the inky blue darkness just before dawn. I’m in my undershorts: most of my clothing has been cut off. Bandages circle my knees, elbows, wrists, torso. Flexing my fingers, I find two on my right hand carefully splinted. My left leg must be broken, too: Tommy’s fixed a makeshift brace into the bandage wrapped tightly around my shin.

            Tommy sleeps in the chair beside my bed, head tilted back, one dangling hand wrapped gently around some small object. I’ve only been awake for a few minutes, though, when he jolts awake, just as the object he had been holding—his cigarette case—clatters to the ground. A superstitious man might assume he’d felt my eyes studying his face, but I know the less glamorous truth: he’d barely been asleep. He kept the case in his hand intentionally, knowing that the noise it made when it dropped would wake him. It’s an old sentry’s trick.

            It means he hasn’t truly slept at all.

            “Awake, Freddie?” he murmurs. He doesn’t sound sleepy—just tired.

            “Mhmmm,” I reply through stiff, aching jaws. I close my eyes again to stop the room swimming. He holds a glass of water to my lips, and I drink.

            “I need to tell you a few things, Freddie.”

            His voice is heavy. I nod stiffly.

            “I had to make a deal with Gates, to get you out.”

            I know this already, but I’m in too much pain to nod. After a moment’s silence, he goes on.

            “He told me he’s been having you watched, waiting for the right time to pick you up. Said he’d seen you up at the steelworks causing trouble. He knew about us—that we’re old friends, or old enemies, depending on who you ask.”

            I can’t help snickering a little at that, but Tommy plows on.

            “I told him I don’t hold with communists,” Tommy explains evenly, slowly, the way the schoolmaster used to explain sums. “You and me, I told him we’re nothing. You were a good hand with a shovel in France, nothing more.”

            I imagine the chill in his eyes, the way they must’ve looked when he said it. No doubt he’d been convincing. He’s almost convincing me now. A shiver runs up my spine.

            “Right off, I told him he should let me do the dirty work. Why get your coppers’ hands bloody, I said, when you’ve got a Blinder on your payroll? But he insisted. Said his men could get something out of you, something that’d bust the steelworks union up for good.”

            I open my eyes—I can’t help it—to see whether his face betrays more than his voice. He’s calm as ever, but the slightest hint of an apology flickers in his eyes.

            “Gates’s men had to have their go first. That was the agreement.”

            My mind understands, but my throbbing skull isn’t so forgiving.

            “No wonder they kept at me for so long,” I mutter, suddenly understanding something. “You _know_ how we limit access to that kind of information. You _knew_ ,” I almost groan, “ that I had nothing of value, but when they picked me up, you told them… you told them I did. Made me out to be some kind of fucking ringleader.”

            “They would’ve killed you, Freddie. Straight off, if they knew you were useless.”

            His eyes hold my puffy, blackened ones steadily, and I know he’s right. He takes my lack of reproach as permission to continue.

            “When they couldn’t get what they were after, they called me up. I told them for what I do I needed somewhere out of the way. Gates wanted to send men with me as witnesses, but I managed to bargain for privacy.” He spreads his hands, gesturing toward the bare room. “They don’t know where I took you. They never will. They’ll only know that, after I was through with you, you gave me this.”

            He holds out a crisp letter, folded three times. I reach for it, but when he sees the pain on my face he reconsiders. Holding the page in steady hands, he reads its contents aloud.

            When he’s done, all the blood has left my face. He’s just read me a detailed account of communist activities from Birmingham to London. The letter’s full of names I’ve only heard in whispers, plans I wasn’t privy to—plans involving secret meetings, foreign aid, and carefully coordinated strikes. Plans that, for all my ignorance of their existence, ring true.

            “I’ve a man on the inside,” Tommy explains. “One of my bookies’ bastard son. Worked his way up, gave a few speeches, listened at a few doors.”

            He almost looks proud.

            I realize I’m not even surprised. Of course Tommy has someone in the unions. Tommy watches everything, everyone.

            “I’ll tell Gates I got it from you. That’s the deal. He’ll have his fucking information, and I’ll have done my job, and this,” Tommy glances around the room, down at my battered body, “all goes away.”

            He makes it sound so simple. But I remember, however hazily, the tinge of desperation in Tommy’s eyes yesterday afternoon—the way he stared at my bloody form, wheels turning.

            “C'mon, Tommy,” I mutter. “You’re not telling me the whole fucking truth.” He can’t be.

            Tommy just stares. But it’s obvious, really, which part of the agreement he’s leaving out. So I say it.

            “Can you dump my body in the river?” I ask, trying to sum up a hint of irony, “Or do they want it back as proof?” I’m proud that my voice doesn’t even break.

            Tommy’s eyes say everything, but he speaks anyway.

            “They don’t trust me. Not yet. They’ve heard things, maybe, about you and me." He sighs deeply. "This is a test. They want proof. Your body, midnight tonight.”

            _Shit._

            We’re both silent for a while. I lie flat, pulsating with pain, completely helpless. He sits with his head in his hands. Warm hands. Hands that could snatch the air from my lungs in the next moment, or the next. And the pressure is there, making his muscles clench. For the first time he has more than reason to kill me: he has need. I can almost see the weight of his growing empire crushing him. One wrong move will lose him everything he’s dreamed of, everything he’s sold his soul for, killed for. And on the other side of that impossibly unbalanced scale hangs my life—minuscule, feather-light.

            “What’ll it be, then?” I finally ask, my words slurred by pain and exhaustion. “One less communist to fuck up your plans? Won’t you miss me?”

            Tommy raises his eyes to mine, and the pain in them nearly stops my heart.

            _He’s truly decided to kill me_. For a split second I’m sure of it.

            Then, finally, he seems to catch his breath.

            “Freddie,” he whispers hoarsely, “why the _fuck_ do you even need to ask?” His tone reminds me of the way men speak when they’ve just been shot—breathless, shocked, wounded.

            I blink.

            “I’m not going to fucking _kill_ you. Fuck. Freddie, I _couldn’t_ —” he breaks off, almost choking, to stare into his hands.

            I should feel relief, but all I feel is fear. Not for myself but for him. For whatever is sending the wheels in his head spinning.

            “What will they do?” I ask, and what I mean is, _What will they do to you_? In the brutal world Tommy inhabits, what will this betrayal cost him?

            He holds my gaze, his lips a thin line. I know what that means. Not a few touches with a knife, a few moments under a lit cigarette. Not even a few broken bones. This betrayal may cost Tommy his life. Certainly it will cost him all he’s planned, all he’s about to achieve.

            I find that I care about his life, about his magnificent, corrupt, terrible, beautiful dreams. I care immensely.

            “There must be another way.” My mind is racing. “Chuck me on a boat to London and tell them I escaped. That it wasn’t your fault.” I know even as I say the words that they’re naïve, pointless.

            “The state you’re in, you’d never get far. I’d have to let you go. Fuck, Freddie, I’d have to carry you. They know that.” He’s struggling to sound calm, resigned, but his knuckles are white where they grip his knees.

            I stare up at the ceiling, lost. The room spins; the whole world feels suddenly chaotic, unbalanced, too big. I only know, with sudden clarity, that Tommy cannot be allowed to sacrifice himself for me. Amidst my fresher injuries the old bullet wound in my chest gives a telltale throb, reminding me that the only real power I’ve ever held lies there—in the moment I saved Tommy’s life so many years ago and nearly gave my own. It’s a debt I can’t bear to see repaid.

            The words leave my mouth before I realize I’ve thought them:

            “Do it, then.”

            He looks confused, so I try again:

            “Tommy, you have to kill me.”

            For what feels like the first time in many years, I watch genuine surprise flit across Thomas Shelby’s face. Blood roars in my ears, drowning the tiny voice screaming: _Do not do this. You want to live._

            “You would do that?” he asks, gaze flickering to meet mine uncertainly. “Give me your permission?”

            “Just make it quick,” I mutter, the words tumbling out too fast. I can’t hold his gaze. I thought Tommy knew everything. Everything about the world, everything about me. But now I see it: one tiny, all-important detail had, until now, escaped his notice. It’s his one blind spot. I love him, and he didn’t know. He didn’t know because he didn’t expect to be loved.

            He turns his suddenly bright eyes to the ceiling, processing this discovery; his fingertips drum a slow rhythm on his thighs. I resist the urge to speak—to ramble on, to convince him of my sincerity. What I’ve just said isn’t the kind of thing you say without meaning it. Tommy knows that. Any words I utter will sound like what they truly are—a loud, empty attempt to convince myself.

            “What about Ada?” He fixes me with a piercing look.

            “Ada will live. She’s strong, Tommy. I chose a path with a noose at the end, or worse, years ago. Some part of her knows that. It’s why she loves me, I think.” I feel as if I’m speaking from underwater—from beneath a great, crushing depth.

            He knows I’m right. Still, his blue gaze crucifies me.

            “What about me?” He lets the words hang in the air for a moment, then clears his throat and repeats:

            “What about _me_ , Freddie?”

            I don’t have an answer for that.

            “Without you, those bastards ’d be mopping me off the floor of a cell right now,” I offer instead.

            He closes his eyes.

            “I would've died there, Tommy. Alone, at the hands of a stranger. This is better."

            "Better?" he queries incredulously, almost hopefully.

            "I’d rather it was you,” I say simply. The steadiness of my own voice surprises me. I’ve surfaced: I can breathe again.

            A long silence stretches across the room; birdsong outside rises from white noise to a fever pitch, filling the empty space between us. Finally he straightens to look me in the eye, all business again.

            “There’s another way,” he says briskly.

            I blink.

            “You won’t like it.”

            I stare at him, waiting.

            “They need a body, Freddie. Somebody has to die. But it doesn’t have to be you.”

            I recoil less at what Tommy’s saying than at the matter-of-fact tone in which he says it.

            “No,” I choke. “Fuck, Tommy! No! The letter’s bad enough. I should make you kill me just for that. How can I hold my head up again, when I’ve let you sell my comrades to save my worthless skin?” My voice is bitter, my speech rambling. “Some fucking martyr I turned out to be. But even I’ve got a limit, Tom, even I—”

            “You’ve no choice in the matter. Not in that, and not in this.” Tommy’s mask is back in place, as if it had never slipped.

            “ _No._ ” I’m struggling to stand, but Tommy easily pushes me down, flicks my feeble assault away with one hand.

            “You can’t stop me, Freddie.”

           “How will you live with yourself, knowing an innocent life paid for mine?” I ask, seething, desperate, pleading. “Think of your conscience, Tommy.”

            For a while Tommy doesn’t answer, and I think I’ve moved him. In a flash of understanding I see Tommy’s soul marred by a thousand tiny, round scars—places where hands, his and others’, have held burning embers to his being, searing away bits of humanity one by one. For a moment, I’m sure I’ve saved one sliver of his deepest self from being deadened by the horrors he’s endured, the horrors he’s created.

            I’m wrong.

            “And what’s to become of my heart, Freddie, if I do as you ask?”

            He can’t meet my eyes.

            “I’m no innocent. _My_ life’s forfeit. Not some poor fucking sod walking down the street with my face,” I whisper forcefully. “It doesn’t matter. Doesn't matter what we have, doesn't matter that you—”

            I mean to say _that you love me_ , but I can’t get it out. I’m not even sure love is the right word. He looks at me with eyes like vices, unwilling to sacrifice, unwilling to let me go. Willing to kill. Is that love? 

            I don’t mention that there’s still a third choice—that Tommy can sacrifice himself, his own life and dreams. As if by unspoken agreement, we've put that possibility behind us. And maybe that is love. Maybe love is fucked up.

            He deliberates, or seems to deliberate, for quite some time. I know he’s looking for another way out.

            “It’s my choice,” he finally decides, his voice the deep, melodic clang of prison bars slamming shut. “My choice, not yours. My conscience,” he insists, gaze drilling into me, “not yours."

            “Will you send Arthur to do it? John?”

            I’m torn between grief for the unnamed man whose death sentence has just fallen from Thomas Shelby’s lips and grief for the man in front of me, the boy he once was.

            “ _My_ conscience,” Tommy repeats, and I know that the blood on his hands will be literal, will be on his hands alone.

            “You’ll leave me here?” Unexpected panic rises in my throat at the thought.

            “I’ll return.” He’s already lifting his coat from the chair’s back, donning his cap. His fingers fidget, desperate to act after so much waiting and thinking. He takes a long look at me, then turns to rummage in a heavy metal chest across the room. When he pulls out several lengths of thick, strong rope, I sigh.

            “I’m not going anywhere,” I remind him stonily.

            “That’s right,” he agrees, “you’re not.”

            Swiftly but surely he trusses me up—ankles and wrists to bedposts, plus several lengths across my body for good measure. The ropes aren’t tight, but in my condition they’re decidedly uncomfortable. When he’s satisfied he hovers at the edge of the cot. Almost absentmindedly, his warm hands smooth the hair from my forehead, trace the lines of my face. As his finger's graze my parched lips his eyes run the length of my body, and I know that he is sorry for my suffering, though the words will never cross his lips. He places a jug of water beside the bed, loosens one wrist so I can pour.

            “Right,” he says distractedly. “I’ll be back.”

            One long, last look at me prompts him to add, “And I’ll bring something for the pain.”

            I don’t ask whether or not I’m safe here: I am. I don’t wonder aloud what will happen if he doesn’t return: he will. The cottage door slams. The engine starts. I listen as Tommy’s car kicks up gravel, try to breathe as the smell of petrol fades.

            I am alone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where things really start getting violent/triggering, so I just thought I'd give one last warning. For that reason, this was also the hardest chapter so far to write. That said, I also really have been wanting to get to this part of the story, and I really hope you enjoy it!

 

 

            The empty, agonizing hours that follow aren’t worth putting into words. I sleep when I can. More often I lie awake, every inch of my body screaming, unable to think. There is the blankness of the mind during sleep, and then there is another kind of blankness—the kind that washes over you in waves of agony, driving out all coherent thought. That emptiness embeds itself with fragments, just as sleep is strewn with dreams, but the blankness of pain brings no rest. Instead it exhausts the senses, until one kind of emptiness gives way to the other and time accelerates from the crawl of pain to the galloping pace of unconsciousness.

            When I wake, I drink from the jug Tommy left. Slowly, between bouts of tortured wakefulness and dreamless sleep, I feel the fever lift. My lips, still bruised, are no longer parched. The blood in my veins no longer feels thick, poisonous. The first hint of hunger twists my stomach.

            When Tommy returns I’ve managed to free my wrists—no small feat, considering the stubbornness of Tommy’s knots and the weakness hampering my crooked, splinted fingers. Though I’ve tried again and again, I can’t reach the ropes binding my ankles; with each attempt my broken ribs have sent me gasping, reeling back. When the door bangs open I’ve only one all-consuming thought in my head.

            “I need to take a fucking piss,” I complain loudly, kicking against the ropes, not even glancing in Tommy’s direction. He kneels to free my feet, not looking at me, either. He lifts me, helps me limp outside, lets me lean on him as I relieve myself. Then it’s back inside, because little black insects are crawling on the edges of my vision, and Jesus fucking Christ it’s hot, and I’m picking up my feet, I know I am, but they must not be moving, because now Tommy’s carrying me.

            He sets me down as if I’m made of glass, smooths my damp forehead with cool hands. Slowly the room comes back into focus, bright and wooden. Tommy’s face is there too, I know, and his hands, but I don’t look. A man has died for my sins, and I don’t want to see his blood staining the linen of Tommy’s shirtsleeves. I don’t want to see how the frozen pools of self-loathing in Tommy’s eyes have deepened, how the monster lurking in the those depths has grown.

            The first clue something’s wrong: Tommy’s hands are shaking. It takes me a moment to realize, as I’m shaking too.

            The second clue: his voice. It’s low, barely audible.

            “Listen to me now, Freddie.”

            He still won’t look at me. Instead his gaze fixes itself on the window, the door. Fear multiplies, buzzing in my skull.

            “I did it. I found a man,” Tommy recounts almost distractedly. “He looked like you. Didn’t know his name. I had—” he almost chokes, clears his throat “—had to hurt him first.” Tommy’s eyes flicker to my broken fingers, the bandages blanketing my body.

            Horror rises in my throat, but the rational side of my mind murmurs _of course_. To pass for me, the man Tommy chose would have to bear my wounds—the wounds Gates had inflicted _and_ the wounds Tommy had been ordered to inflict. To be convincing, nearly every cut and bruise would have to find purchase in a living body—one that could bleed. One that could feel pain. My substitute didn’t just die for me. He suffered.

            Guilt, once only a dim flicker, now shines from Tommy’s eyes the way a sunbeam falls through a magnifying glass, burning all it touches. Is this it? Is this why he can barely speak to me?

            “When it was done, I kept up my end. I brought the body to Gates. Said it was you. He believed me. I was sure of it.”

            Tommy’s gaze still lingers on the door, as if by staring hard enough he can pierce the wood, survey the road beyond. Now I feel like I’m choking. He releases my hand to fiddle with something in his pocket.

            “I told you I’d bring you something for the pain, but I’d none left, so I sent John down to Muldovey’s for an ounce.”

            Not Gates. He’d taken his business to Gates’ competition, a stranger—an opium seller who didn’t know Tommy’s habits, who wouldn’t care how much Tommy needed or why. Who couldn’t possibly suspect Thomas Shelby of harboring an injured man.

            “When John met me at the Garrison, he was sure he’d seen a man following him down from Muldovey’s. He was right. A car stopped outside. I waited. I cleared the pub. I wrote a note to Poll saying where you were, I hid the note, and I waited for them to come put a bullet in my head.”

            I can see him now, one hand curled around a glass of whisky, the other gripping the table. I imagine his bright, tired eyes drinking in the little pub, certain of death, glorying one last time in what is his.

            “I was ready for them. But they just fucking sat there. Just waited.”

            _Waited for Tommy to lead them back to me_.

            He doesn’t have to say it. I understand, just as I understand why he didn’t send Arthur or John for me in his place. I know without asking, too, that the note to Polly ended in ashes, that he returned for me alone.

            The business is one thing. It’s in the Shelby nature, perhaps, to risk all in the pursuit of gold and glory. But this is different. This is personal. John or Arthur would’ve left me to die in that cell without a backward glance. They would have expected Tommy to do the same. It was the smart thing. The right thing for the family.

            Instead, Tommy freed me. The moment he took that risk, he took all the responsibility, all the consequences on himself alone.

            No.

            He will hold his family as high above this bloody mess as possible. No reinforcements will arrive. There aren’t any wagons full of Lee boys on the way. No Peaky lads. The razor glinting in Tommy’s cap stands alone.  

            Still, though he could so easily have left me here, he returned. Gates had no proof of Tommy’s betrayal, only suspicion. Only a bit of excess opium purchased from a competitor.

            If Tommy had only stayed away; if he’d filled his flat with sweet smoke and whores every night for a week; if he’d laughed in the doubters’ faces and punctured their suspicions with icy eyes, they might well have believed. _Freddie Thorne is dead_. _Thomas Shelby killed him_. Time would have remedied the falsehood. The jug Tommy left is already empty. In the absence of food or water, what little strength I’d regained over the past day or so would have evaporated. Tommy’s final knots would have held. Left alone, I’d have been lucky to live out the week. Perhaps my spirit would have lingered, doomed to wait an eternity for a man who’d never return. More likely, I’d simply be gone. No longer a liability. It might have been that easy.

             But he came back.

            “Time’s running out, Freddie.”

            He draws from his pocket a vial of white powder, finally looking at me, and I can see the wheels turning.

            _Good. He hasn’t given up_.

            “It’s called Tokyo.”

            I know what it is. It’s the stuff they give broken-down racehorses to fix a win. I’ve seen the manic gleam in men’s eyes, watched them throw punches with shattered hands and not so much as flinch.

            “John keeps a dose in the car—thinks it’s a big fucking secret—so the men coming for us now don’t know I have it.”

            His tone is regaining its clipped edges.

            Expertly he sprinkles the contents of the vial onto a crisp sheet of newsprint, cuts the white powder into a line, offers it to me. His hand barely trembles.

            I snort the bitter substance without hesitation, whatever principles I’d once clung to now only distant memories.

            He’s crushing the tiny glass vial beneath his heel, sweeping the glittering shards between the floorboards when I begin to feel it: the tiniest hint of strength beginning to trickle through my veins, blood beginning to surge. The bare walls of the tiny room take on a shiny, metallic tinge.

            “It’ll be four men. All armed, Freddie,” he says cautiously, and I understand. He takes out his revolver—just the one—and checks each barrel. Three empty chambers, three bullets. Three chances.

            _Only idiots would let Thomas Shelby remain armed for long,_ the rational voice reminds me _._

            No chance, then.

            But Tommy tells me his plan anyway.

            It’s simple, really. They’ll disarm Tommy. Nothing we can do about that other than go down fighting, and I’ve never seen Tommy so determined to live. So it won’t be a firefight.

            They’ll search me, find nothing. I’ll keep my head down, feigning stupor, unconsciousness, and delirium by turns. I’ll ignore the itching in my body, the pacing restlessness coursing through my veins. I’ll bottle it up, waiting for that perfect second. It will be up to me.

            Tommy’s plan hinges on the element of surprise. Gates’ men must so severely underestimate my strength that they drop their guard. It’s important that they believe me to be both half-dead and drugged, so Tommy lays his pipe out on the table. I watch as he kindles a match, watch the flame flicker in his eyes.

            Once it’s lit, Tommy sets the pipe in my hand. He watches almost wistfully as smoke wafts across the room, pluming in delicate circles as it crosses the white shafts of sun pouring in through the square-paned window. His pale eyes follow the smoke as my dark ones watch him—the trembling hands, the clenched jaw.

            Finally he sighs deeply, takes the pipe from my hand. Avoiding my questioning gaze, he lifts the instrument to his lips and takes a deep drag.

            I open my lips to protest, but something in his expression forces the words back down my throat. _He needs this. Why?_

            Tommy’s pupils darken, defying the harsh midday sun. Gradually the tremors in his hands cease. Still, the sickly smoke can’t erase the hollow, haunting panic behind his gaze. Finally, he gives me one last order.

            “You have to wait, Freddie. Bide your time. Hold off until the moment’s right.”

            _Of course_ , I think. That’s the plan, isn’t it? Catch them off their guard. Wait until I’m at full strength, until Tommy’s ready, until one of the men wanders too close, until a gun is within my reach. Move too early and I’ll end us both.

            “I _know_. Damn you Tommy, don’t you trust me?”

            Eyes like tunnels drilled in ice capture mine, hold them steady.

            “No matter what happens,” he insists. “Swear, Freddie.”

            Something about the way he says it makes me shudder. Still, his lack of faith stings my pride.

            “If you can stand around for long enough to put me in this sorry state, I can hold out long enough to let you take your fucking beating,” I reply grimly.

            “You don’t know these men.”

            “And you do?”

            “Only by reputation. They’re bad men, Freddie.”

            I know he means _they’re worse men_. Worse than Thomas Shelby and the Peaky Blinders. Worse, somehow, than the men whose hands wrung pain from my body only a few days earlier, whose violence left me half-dead, broken.

            What could be worse than that? I can think of only one possibility. One way to break a man along with his bones. One way to crush the pride of a king. I’ve heard stories, of course. A place as dark and dirty as Small Heath brews its share of ugly tales. You hear them in taverns during the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes loud and bawdy, more often spoken in whispers, these stories fall from the lips of damaged or ruthless men—men who’ve glimpsed the darkness in one way or another. They’ve always existed, these rumors. Reports of interrogators and debt collectors with unusually cruel methods. Accounts of men raped in prison cells and back alleys as punishment for debts owed, boys sodomized and shot as examples. Until now, I thought them fictions—monstrous tales meant to frighten even the most frightening men.

            But one glance at Tommy confirms the truth. I’ve seen the way he faces pain, the look that means he’s steeled himself for death. This is something more, deeper, different. I have to turn away.

            I’m no stranger to human fear. I’ve gazed into the eyes of soldiers before firing squads, lain beside boys bleeding out in field hospitals. I’ve seen this look on hundreds, thousands of faces. A look of dread, of resignation. It’s the glance ordinary men share in the seconds before they go over the top. The look that says, that screams, that cries out: _with every fiber of my being I do not want to do this, but I am about to do it anyway_. The look that openly admits _I am afraid of what comes next_ but which neither hopes nor begs for an alternative.

            If I had to sum up the horror of France in one image, it would be a portrait of that look. A million portraits, all of the same face. It was the uniform we all wore.

            Yet, young as he was, Sergeant Major Thomas Shelby always had a way of twisting that universal expression of horror into something else. Before his enemies it became a bitter smile, a proud stare. Under the eyes of his comrades he turned the same fear to sympathy—to concern for the men in his charge. While our eyes stared wide ahead, unseeing, Tommy’s read our faces one by one, tallied up our wounds, showed us sympathy, gave us courage. Though he felt the same fear and crawled through the same mud, Tommy Shelby was an alchemist. He knew the secret of transformation: fear to defiance, despair to determination, terror to clarity, mutual dread to brotherhood. Mud to gold.

            Like alchemy, it was always a sham, a trick. Whatever’s coming now, whatever Tommy’s dreading, it’s enough to shatter the illusion, if only for a second.

            I can’t see that look on his face and still do what I have to do.

            Tommy must know it, because when I work up the courage to glance at him again his face is a mask, white and blank. He doesn’t even flinch when the sound of tires on gravel stirs the air. When we hear the engine cut out, Tommy simply arranges the pipe in my limp hand once more. His eyes betray nothing.

            Voices outside. Tommy cradles his gun in his hand, lifts it slowly, cocks it, trains it on the door.

            We listen to shuffling on the step, then an explosion of sound as the door breaks open. Through the slits of my eyelids I watch Tommy stand. Silence. Four men block the door—four black silhouettes. Four guns trained on Tommy, ready to riddle his body with lead.

            They’re expecting Tommy to stand and fight—to die what would, before the war, have been considered an honorable death. But Tommy and I know better. There is no honor, only survival.

            Finally, the silhouette in the middle chuckles.

            “What’re you playing at, pikey?” he asks almost casually. “Want me to shoot, do you?”

            Tommy still doesn’t move. I focus on his back, his shoulders. He looks confident, almost relaxed. I wish I could see his eyes.

            “Let’s make a deal,” the shadow offers. “You slide your gun over here, and we’ll forget this ever happened. I’ll take what I came for,” he gestures to me, “and you’ll stay on your own fucking territory from now on, and Mr. Gates will thank you kindly.”

            Lies. Not even good ones. But Tommy knows the truth. He can die now, or he can surrender, suffer, and die later.

            Tommy bends down and releases the weapon in one graceful motion. The revolver skitters across the uneven floorboards to rest at the shadow’s feet.

            “Cap too, Peaky. Do you take me for an idiot?”

            Tommy tosses his cap onto the table across the room.

            For a moment Tommy is allowed to stand there, still and calm and cold. Then three shadows rush him. I watch a blow knock the air from his lungs, watch him fall to his knees. One of the men—a redhead—holds Tommy by the shoulders. Gates’ men place their pistols on the bare table, well out of Tommy’s reach or mine, but the middle shadow—the leader—keeps Tommy’s revolver. Next, rough hands search my motionless form. I’m not at full strength yet, though I can feel the pulsing, tingling power filling my fingertips and toes. A few blows to the ribs later, I’m no longer a threat.

            Rough fists tangle in my hair, turning my face toward the place where Tommy kneels.

            “Open your fucking eyes, cunt.”

            I obey. It’s the middle shadow speaking from where he stands over Tommy’s kneeling, restrained form. In the light he looks utterly ordinary: brown eyes, brown hair, middling height, unremarkable features. Still, something in his expression makes me shiver.

            “You think Thomas Shelby’s a big man?” He’s taunting me. “You’ve got his protection? Some dirty gypsy blood pact?” He hits Tommy once—a backhanded slap across the face—then pulls back and hits him again. “How’s that for protection? Do you feel safe, you bolshie bastard?”

            Tilting Tommy’s chin up, the nondescript brown-eyed man draws one finger across the lip he’s just bloodied. Tommy stares up at him defiantly, and for a moment I wonder if this is a different man than he expected, a lesser evil. I wonder if Tommy’s dread, the dread that made my stomach sink, is gone.

            But the brown-eyed man just smiles, and Tommy’s mask slips. His eyes flicker, betraying something more like shame than fear. The brown-eyed man’s smile widens.

            It’s the first time I feel it—the almost irresistible urge to leap to my feet and fight. Whatever this is, whatever is coming for Tommy, I need to stop it.

            Instead, I stop myself.

            When the brown-eyed man approaches me, his gun is in his hand. It’s pointed at me. I lie helpless as he presses it to my temple and smears Tommy’s blood across my lips.

            “There’s your blood oath,” the man sneers. “Worth shit, just like all promises made by fucking gypsy bastards like him.” He points to Tommy, and the anonymous hand tangled in my hair forces me to look. When Tommy meets my eyes I expect to see a message— _not yet_ , or _now_ , or _hold it the fuck together, Freddie_. Instead I see nothing. Only wide-blown pupils and the understanding that the next minutes or hours will be hell. Only fear that has been accepted, embraced. Tommy is going somewhere else in his head.

            I need him here.

            “Tommy—” I gasp, but raucous laughter cuts me off as the redhead lands a kick to Tommy’s ribs, knocking him to the floor. The moment is gone.

            The brown-eyed man pulls him to his knees, and the two lackeys in my field of vision watch with some mixture of disgust and relish as their leader tilts Tommy’s chin up again.

            “Keep those eyes open,” the voice belonging to the hand in my hair whispers, so I do. I watch as an ordinary-looking man’s almost gentle hands trace the lines of Tommy’s skull, fingers caressing the shaven temples, a sickening reenactment of the moment I shared with Tommy what feels like centuries ago.

            “Do you know who I am?” the brown-eyed man asks softly.

            Tommy doesn’t answer.

            Seconds later, nose broken, Tommy finds his voice.

            “Yes.”

            Yes, he knows. The smile that stretches across the brown-eyed man’s face confirms my suspicion: this, for him, is half the fun.

            “Should’ve made me shoot you.”

            Tommy just closes his eyes.

            “I’d always heard Thomas Shelby called a prideful man. A dirty fucking gypsy, true, but cursed with the pride of Lucifer himself. Guess you shouldn’t believe everything you hear, eh boys?” The three lackeys chuckle darkly.

            “Not so dignified now, are you?” He spits in Tommy’s face. “Not so brave. Can’t even die the clean death of a soldier. Ten to one you stole those medals off a proper English gentleman. Typical pikey.”

            “Fuck you,” Tommy hisses through gritted teeth, eyes still closed. It’s a stupid thing to say, but the sound of his voice ignites a spark of hope in me nonetheless. The brown-eyed man raises his hand to strike Tommy down again, but when Tommy doesn’t even open his eyes—doesn’t even flinch—the hand sinks, comes to rest on Tommy’s shoulder instead.

            “Tell you what. For you—for whatever you are, a fucking war hero, I guess—I’ll make an exception.”

            Tommy smiles a bitter, terrible smile. He looks like he’s asleep, dreaming wicked dreams. If the brown-eyed man is unnerved by the smile, though, he hides it well.

            “I’ll let you have a little smoke. Dull the pain a bit. Take you,” he cups Tommy’s face in his hands, forces the blue eyes to his, “somewhere else.”

            He gestures to one of the men, who seizes the pipe and pulls out a match. Tommy watches these preparations silently, the shadow of a smile still visible. If he’d ever looked at me like that, I realize, I would have shrunk to half my size—shrunk until I was an insect beneath Tommy’s shiny leather shoe. But the brown-eyed man just smiles back.

            “You just have to do a little something for me first,” he continues, fingers fumbling at his trouser buttons. Tommy’s stare is unbroken. He holds himself aloof for as long as he can. Finally, when the brown-eyed man seizes Tommy’s chin roughly, Tommy speaks.

            “Anything you put in my mouth, I will fucking bite off.”

            For a moment my heart soars, but then the brown-eyed man gives a little nod, and I feel the hands gripping my hair tighten.

            “You won’t,” the brown-eyed man contradicts evenly. “If you do, your communist friend here dies. After I fuck him, of course.”

            I lie frozen.

            “You need him alive,” Tommy replies cooly.

            “Do I?” The brown-eyed man raises his eyebrows. “Gates thinks so. Thinks there’s some intelligence to be bled from him yet. But I think it’s bullshit. Nobody needs this pathetic bastard. I’d almost be ashamed to fuck him, state he’s in.”

            The air has left my lungs, but apparently not Tommy’s.

            “Lot of trouble I’ve taken, then, for a worthless man,” Tommy counters.

            “See, that’s the question, right?” the brown-eyed man muses. “Thomas Shelby, heart of stone. Thomas Shelby only fucks whores since France. Mr. Shelby hates Freddie Thorne. Tried to run him out of town.” The brown-eyed man recites Small Heath’s gossip in a sing-song voice. “Same tired tune. According to most, you’re just the kind of man to murder this sniveling commie cunt without a second thought.”

            Through half-closed eyes I catch a glimpse of Tommy’s cold blue stare. No hint of sympathy warms his gaze. He plays his part masterfully.

            “There’s others who say different, though,” the brown-eyed man carries on. “Say it in whispers, ‘course. Most of those poor bastards ’d rather eat shit than say a word against Mr. Shelby. Some of the duller ones, though— after a pint or two, they say you’re lovers.”

            I hear footsteps, feel a cold hand on my cheek, the barrel of a revolver under my chin.

            “Fuck, Peters. Leave him be,” Tommy says sharply, almost commandingly. When the brown-eyed man’s hand—Peters’ hand—trails down my neck, Tommy lunges for the guns on the table.

            He was never going to reach them. He must have known that. What he gets instead is pistol-whipped across the face. What he gets is Peters’ attention turned back toward him, away from me.

            When next I dare to look, Tommy’s crouched at Peters’ feet, holding his face in bloody hands. After watching for the space of a few moments Peters drags Tommy’s head up by his hair, pressing the revolver to his temple. He inspects Tommy’s wounds—the newest a gash across his left cheekbone—and smiles, clearly pleased.

            “I’d tell you there’s payback coming for that dirty trick,” he admits in a confidential tone, “but the truth is, everything I’m going to do to you I was going to do anyway.”

            A look of understanding passes between the brown eyes and the blue ones.

            “But you know that,” Peters concedes. “You’re not a stupid man.” Sighing he releases Tommy, who wipes the blood from his cheek with the back of one hand. I can see that it’s shaking again.

            “You can keep the smoke,” Tommy says, voice low and firm. When Peters doesn’t answer he clears his throat, tries again. “There’s no fucking deal.”

            Peters smiles.

            “Right, Thomas. There never was any deal. There’s only what I want. And I want this,” he continues unbuttoning his trousers with one hand, holding the gun to Tommy’s temple with the other, “and then I want you to smoke. And after that, I want to fuck you. I want to watch my men fuck you. And maybe then I’ll want to burn you, just to hear you scream. Maybe I’ll dig a hole and lower you down and listen to you beg as dirt covers up this pretty, pretty face.” He drags the gun across Tommy’s cheekbone, over his lips. “Or maybe, if you’re lucky…”

            Peters presses the revolver between Tommy’s eyes, mimes pulling the trigger.

            “It’s up to you.”

            But Tommy won’t make this easy. Peters has to hit him seven more times to get him to open his mouth. This time he has one of his men strike Tommy across the shoulders with a pried-up floorboard—to spare his face, Peters says. _There’s no sport in it when their eyes are swollen shut._

            In the end, it’s not the blows that move Tommy. It’s the threats.

            _I’ll kill the fucking commie. I’ll do it now, and I’ll still get what I want in the end. I know where your aunt lives. Your little brother. Finn, is it? You’ll be dead soon anyway. Just give me what I want._

            When at Peters’ behest the man holding me wraps his hands around my throat and squeezes, Tommy stops fighting. Over the sound of the blood rushing in my ears I hear a low, ragged voice:

            “Enough. It’s alright. It’s alright.”

            I’m not sure whether he’s talking to me or Peters, but the hand on my neck withdraws. Air floods back into my  lungs. The sound of blows and Tommy’s cries gives way to a long silence.

            Although I close my eyes and turn away, and although Tommy doesn’t make a sound, the cruel taunts and harsh laughter following closely on the heels of that silence tell me more than I want to know. I’m digging my fingers into the wood of the cot, trying to drown the sounds in pain, when Peters remembers me.

            “Wake up, you red shit.”

            I ignore him.

            He must have gestured to the man holding me, because I feel a sharp slap, then hands turning my face away from the wall.

            “Make him fucking watch.”

            I feign unconsciousness. I tell myself nothing in the world can make me open my eyes. It’s the only power I have left—the only thing I can do for Tommy in this moment. I expect the jabs and slaps, crude attempts to wake me. In spite of everything—the humming in my veins, the buzzing in my ears, the vaguely sickening feeling of splinted bones shifting without pain—I keep my limbs limp, my palms open.

            But when the half-stifled cries start, my resolve weakens.

            “Tell your friend to open his eyes,” Peters demands, and there’s another low cry, followed by a scuffling, dragging noise. Something falls heavily against the side of the cot where I lie frozen, hesitating.

            “It’s alright, Freddie. Look. Look at me Freddie.” It’s Tommy’s voice, inches from my face.

            I look. He reaches to cradle my head with one shaking, bloody hand. With his other arm he clutches his left side— bruised, maybe broken ribs.

            “I’m alright, Freddie.” Even now, though crimson streaks his face, though his breath comes in short, agonized gasps, though his lip bleeds fresh and bruises shaped like fingerprints mark his throat, his eyes almost convince me.

             It takes all my willpower to lie still as Peters wrenches Tommy’s shoulder, pulls him away. Peters reaches a hand toward me, and there’s another scuffle. For the briefest second Tommy succeeds in pushing Peters back. Despite the pain in his ribs he rises to his full height, planting himself between my broken form and Peters’ violence. Immediately the lackeys start forward, but their leader holds them back with a wave of his hand. He looks Tommy in the face and listens as Tommy speaks urgently, reasonably:

            “I will do whatever you want. Whatever you want, Peters. And he’ll watch. Just leave him out of this. He’s in no fit shape. You have me.”

            As proof, Tommy returns to the spot on the floor he’d left, raises his hands, kneels slowly.

            “You have me.”

            Tommy’s eyes are wide, earnest. His voice is music—medicine to calm a startled horse or subdue a snarling cur.

            Peters can’t resist. Holstering the revolver inside his jacket, he moves toward Tommy in a trance. The look on his face says he can’t believe his good luck.

            Inside I’m screaming at Tommy, begging him to fight back. Some part of me loathes the man kneeling on the floor—hates him for giving in, for making me watch this.

            I try to look without seeing, focusing on knots in the wooden walls behind Tommy’s head. I try not to notice when Tommy chokes, try to pretend I don’t see the violence of the hands gripping his hair, the way Peters throws his head back in pleasure while Tommy struggles to breathe. I pretend, too, to overlook the way Tommy leans in, the fact that he is _trying_. I know, of course, that every motion of Tommy’s lips is a tiny sacrifice—an offering to placate the man towering over him. I know I’m witnessing Tommy’s last bid for some shred of control, some meager means by which he might manipulate his tormentor.

            I know it won’t work. Tommy must know it too. Peters is a sadist of the highest degree. There’s no pleasing him for long, no magic word or touch to garner special favor in his eyes. Only Tommy’s pain will satisfy.

            Still, Tommy tries. When Peters chokes and slaps him, Tommy meets violence with gentle, almost eager obedience. For the space of several minutes Peters even seems entranced, taken in, overwhelmed. In a sickening flash I remember how it felt—to stand over the king of the Shelbys like that, to find him broken, not unwilling. When I blink it’s my fingers tangled in Tommy’s hair, my grip bruising his shoulders. It was enough for me. Enough to feel the warmth of Tommy’s lips, to sense his pain. Enough to feel for one moment taller and stronger than the tallest, the strongest man I’d ever known.

            But Peters is not me, and it is not enough.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has commented such lovely, encouraging things thus far! This is NOT the last chapter, but it's probably the penultimate one, as this story line is rapidly approaching its destination. Also, as a final content warning, please note that this chapter contains graphic depictions of rape and violence. Don't read anything you don't want to. But, if you do want to, I hope you enjoy. :)

 

            When it’s over Peters watches, laughing, as Tommy wretches. Buttoning his trousers he steps backward, leaving Tommy kneeling alone in the room’s bare center where an errant beam of white sunlight casts gridded window-lines upon the floor. Tommy wipes his mouth with the back of one shaking hand. A strange silence falls. Tommy kneels in place, his ragged breathing the only sound in the still room. Taking their cues from Peters, our captors eye Tommy curiously, waiting. Wondering.

            Finally, Tommy’s breathing quiets. He lifts his chin, rises stiffly to his feet. Still clutching his ribs, he looks Peters directly in the eye when he says:

            “I’ll take that smoke now.”

            Peters looks almost impressed. Pulling the wooden chair from where Tommy left it by my bedside, he sets it before Tommy, gestures for him to sit. Tommy does.

            Once again, Peters draws Tommy’s revolver from the holster inside his coat. This time, he stands behind Tommy. Digging the barrel into the base of Tommy’s skull, he leans in close.

            “I like you, Tommy. I really do.”

            It’s the low, lilting tone of a lover, and I can’t help noticing Peters’ hand on Tommy’s throat, at once a threat and a caress. Tommy’s face betrays nothing. Peters goes on.

            “I’m not a man to give second chances, so know that I’m being fucking generous when I say I’ll end it now.”

            Tommy blinks, trains his gaze on the ceiling.

            “Right now. One bullet in your head. Too good a death for an upstart pikey, but I’ll give it to you. All you have to do,” he murmurs, “is just say the word.”

            For a long time, Tommy stares without blinking at some far away point. I wait, my breath caught somewhere in my throat. _He won’t give in_ , I tell myself. _Not now. Not yet_. But his eyes won’t meet mine, and I fear for him. Finally, he speaks.

            “And Freddie?”

            Peters laughs softly, almost sympathetically.

            “I promised my men a bit of fun,” he confides, “and they’re not the kind of men I like to disappoint.”

            Tommy smiles bitterly at that.

            “And you, Peters?” he queries, eyebrows raised incredulously. “Have you had your fun?”

            This Peters chooses to ignore.

            “Don’t be a fool, Thomas. Just you say the word,” he insists, “and this’ll all be over.”

            But Tommy’s silence stretches on and on until finally Peters returns the gun to its holster, smile wider than ever.

            “You know,” he muses aloud, “I must’ve made a hundred men that offer. A hundred fucking men. I’d pegged you for one of the smart ones. But all those poor bastards—even the boys half your age—had the sense to want to die like men. All but the half-wits and the cowards ask for a clean death when I offer.”

            “And do you give it to them?” Tommy asks calmly.

            Peters only chuckles in answer.

            “Then quit the fucking games,” Tommy rejoins evenly, “and let me have my fucking smoke.”

            I watch shock flicker across our captor’s face, watch his confidence dim for the briefest of seconds. Then anger replaces surprise, and the brown eyes darken.

            “The way I see it, you’re in no position to be making demands,” Peters reminds Tommy tersely. “Most men in your position save their breath for prayers.”

            “I don’t believe,” Tommy says simply, his posture open, earnest, confident. Unafraid.

            For a moment I hold my breath, sure that at any moment Peters will remember my existence, use me as leverage once again. But Tommy has played his part masterfully. All eyes—even mine—fasten upon him, transfixed. He sits the simple wooden chair like a throne, the blue of his gaze untainted. Though the same slow-creeping sunbeam marks the place, already the image of Thomas Shelby on his knees feels like some bizarre, half-remembered dream. Tommy’s eyes are shameless, fearless. Every particle of light in the dim room seems to find him, clinging to his bloodied frame. In this moment, Tommy is saint and martyr and heathen rolled all into one—a subject worthy of some great artist’s brush.

            Peters is quick to remedy the mistake.

            “Hold him,” he mutters, and the two unoccupied lackeys step forward, seize Tommy by the arms, wrestle him from the chair. “On his knees,” Peters instructs, and the men obey, dragging Tommy backward to the sunlit spot where drops of his blood still color the bare floor.

            Peters circles the scene slowly, and for a split second hope flares within me. One step more, and he’ll be within reach. The hands holding me have loosened. Not one of Peters’ men has noticed the way my fingers fidget and itch, ready to strike. Every eye is on Tommy’s sunlit form—on the white and crimson, the ice and the shadow.

            One more step. Just one more, and the gun nestled by Peters’ ribs—Tommy’s revolver—will find my hands, and this will all be over.

            But Peters’ path shifts, its orbit drawn tight by the formidable blue of Tommy’s gaze, and the moment passes.

            “Think you’re special, do you?” Peters demands, coming to stand before Tommy. “Think you’re different, somehow, from all the other poor bastards? Think you won’t scream and cry and beg—and pray—before the end?” He’s affecting amusement, but there’s a hard edge to his voice now. He’s angry. Maybe even frightened.

            I would be too, for Tommy’s cool stare answers Peters question in a way words never could. _I am special_ , it says. _I am different_.

            Even when Peters orders his men to throw Tommy down, even when their boots crush the air from his lungs, even when once again Tommy’s cries reach my ears, that look remains etched in my mind. Even when they pin Tommy down and splay his fingers out on the floor. Even when I hear the crunch of bone and the screams. Even when he begs, in a voice without any music left:

            “Stop. Stop _. Stop_.”

            And I know it’s etched in Peters’ mind too, burned like a firebrand in his twisted brain, because he doesn’t stop. Not for a long time.

            When it’s finally over, it takes a bucket of icy well-water to bring Tommy back. The buzzing behind my eyes is slowly building to a crescendo. I need to act, need it more desperately than I had previously realized possible, but all I can do is lie quiet and still, _so still_ , and watch. Ricocheting around the room in search of a distraction, my gaze seizes upon the dirty red streams crossing the floor, icy water mingled with blood. I focus on the rivulets crawling toward me, try not to notice the blurred forms moving on the edges of my vision as they drag Tommy back to the chair. I watch the bloody tendrils slip between the floorboards to join the shards of blue glass Tommy swept there only an hour ago, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from screaming.

            “Still fancy that smoke?” Peters offers, smile back in place. When Tommy’s head remains bowed, Peters rocks back on his heels, satisfied.

            Silently Peters makes the preparations. The burnt, heavy sweetness of opium wends its way across the room. When Peters offers the lit pipe, Tommy reaches with his right hand, cradling the shattered left close to his ribs.

            For a moment Peters retains his grip on the instrument, forcing Tommy to glance upward, asking, pleading.

            Then, at the flash of anguished blue, Peters releases the pipe into Tommy’s grasp. Smiling, he watches. I watch, too. Behind the smoke Tommy’s pale eyes look almost white, the color of driftwood under a scathing sun.

            I can’t wait any longer. Peters’ forgetfulness of my existence is helpful only to a certain point. What if he never takes that crucial step—the careless, thoughtless step in my direction, within my reach? I know Tommy’s thinking it too. It’s in the way he draws on the pipe, filling his lungs with leaden forgetfulness. _He doesn’t think he’ll survive this,_ I realize. And I can’t help wondering if maybe, just maybe, he isn’t sure he wants to.

            I have to do something.

            So I cry out from beneath hooded eyelids, moaning as if in my sleep. Immediately the anonymous grip in my hair tightens, and I feel the weight of all eyes come to rest upon me—all but Tommy’s. I search the blurry slits of light before me, willing Peters’ shadow to grow, willing his frame to approach, darkening my sight.

            But Peters barely turns. Merely glancing in my direction, he only chuckles and says softly, for Tommy’s ears alone:

            “Right now, I bet you’d trade places with that sodding heap of bones in a heartbeat.”

            When Tommy doesn’t answer, Peters grabs a fistful of Tommy’s hair, turns his gaze toward me. Tommy’s eyes have gone oddly dark. Still, awareness sparkles in them, a pilot light not easily put out. I watch his eyes flicker to my restless fingers, and I catch the barest hint of a message in the set of his jaw. _Not yet_.

            I try to send my own silent message, imagine it floating among the dust particles that dance in and out of the lengthening sunbeam stealing slowly across the floor. It, too, seems to be reaching out to Tommy. We’re saying the same thing, the sun and I:

            _Hold on_.

            And Tommy does. He knows as well as I do that the moment he gives up—the moment he stops fighting, stops feeling—will be the moment Peters takes his life, and mine. We need more time. So Tommy buys it.

            When next Peters taunts him, Tommy finds his voice. Head clouded by the smoke, pupils wide in glassy eyes, Tommy conjures up the words to keep Peters diverted. Pallid face streaked with blood, he summons the haughty smiles, the cold stares.

            The time he buys, he pays for dearly.

            Once again, I can’t watch. The pain on Tommy’s face when Peters twists his shattered hand is bad enough, but the look in Tommy’s eyes when Peters orders his men to clear the wooden table is worse. When Peters orders Tommy to stand and begins to slip buttons loose—first the cuffs of Tommy’s sleeves, then his collar—I let my eyes fall shut.

            Try as I might, I can’t block out the sounds. First, a dragging, scraping noise—the table being pushed toward the center of the room. Then cruel words, harsh laughter. Unwillingly I listen as the man whose courage sustained me in the pitch dark of the tunnels suffers himself to be called a coward, a cocksucker, a dirty fucking gypsy, a whore’s son. I listen as vulgar tongues ridicule the man I most admire. Listen as they pick apart his dreams for a better life, mock his scars, belittle his sacrifices. And I don’t have to see to feel the slaps, to know they’ve kicked him to the floor again or dragged him to his feet.

            Eventually Tommy falls silent. Still, he always gets back up, and the venom in Peters’ voice assures me: Thomas Shelby still, at least, can meet his tormentor’s gaze.

            Then, finally, the scuffling and grating laughter subsides into a long, stifling hush, and Peters is whispering something I can’t hear, and I need to know.

            Almost against my will my eyes open. Immediately, I wish they hadn’t.

            Tommy leans across the bare wood of the table, stripped to his undershorts. The last ray of pink evening has stretched itself across the room to find him, accenting the reds and purples of his wounds, tinting the white of his skin. Peters leans over him, a dark shadow in a sharp suit, pouring whispers like poison in Tommy’s ear. The knuckles of Tommy’s good hand grip the table edge above his head, white as bone. His eyes, once so cold, are almost violet in the warm light—more like bruised petals than ice. They stare, unseeing, at some far away point.

            I close my eyes again, but too late: I can still see, as well as hear, the rhythmic thudding that follows. When Tommy’s breath catches audibly I can see his features twist without looking.

            _Thud. Thud. Thud_.

            Minutes stretch into years, and still it isn’t over. The urge to scream—to interrupt somehow, if only for a moment—overwhelms me. Only the memory of Tommy’s warning holds me back. _Not yet_.

            _Notyetnotyetnotyet_.

            I catch only snippets of the whispered words dripping like acid into Tommy’s ears. _Coward. Like it? Be dead soon. Won’t matter._

Then, finally, it’s over. I open my eyes long enough to watch Peters step back, long enough to see another man—the redhead—take his place. Laughter the color of darkness fills the room. Tommy remains stretched upon the table, face turned away now, every muscle taut, knuckles white, and quiet—so quiet. Blue twilight, pale and cold, paints Tommy’s white body in ghostly tones. When I squint, I can almost see him fading, can almost see right through him.

            It begins again, and I’m about to close my eyes—about to die rather than reopen them—when I catch a flutter of movement. Peters takes one careless step backward. Sated, relaxed, he takes another. And another.

            And another.

            I’m ready.

With one trembling, lighting-quick hand, I pull him toward me by the back of his coat, reach around, wrap my fingers around the grip of Tommy’s revolver. He seizes my wrist, and the other pair of hands holding me scrambles for better purchase, but it’s already too late.

            _Pop_.

            A strangled cry, and Peters falls to the ground cradling his left side.

            Somehow I find myself standing. There’s another _pop_ , and for the first time I’m conscious of my finger squeezing the trigger. I watch blood bloom on the unfamiliar face of the man who’d sat behind the head of my bed through it all—the man whose hands had directed my gaze, forced the air from my lungs—and I watch those unfamiliar eyes darken, watch the hands seize, the body crumple.

            _Pop_.

            The redhead was using Tommy as a shield. I realize this only after he, too, crumples, blood gurgling from a wound in his throat. As he falls, his hands grasp at Tommy’s skin, as if pleading for forgiveness. But Tommy stands statue-like amid the chaos.

            As if of its own accord, the revolver finds another target.

            _Click_.

            Three bullets. Three chances.

            I lunge for the far corner where Peters’ men stashed their guns, but the last man standing blocks my way. He lands more punches than I do, but I don’t feel them. Seizing his head in my hands, I feel something snap. In the end it’s me still standing, me staggering toward the place where Tommy stood only seconds before.

            But Tommy isn’t there.

            And then the other sounds—the noises I dimly realize began moments ago—make sense. The room comes into focus, and I turn to see what I know I will see.

            The chair lies broken into pieces on the blood-slick floor, and Peters is still moving—just barely—and Tommy’s using a chair leg. He’s hitting Peters again and again, and I can’t see Tommy’s eyes, and I don’t want to.

            Though the room spins and glitters, I make my way toward him. Peters stops moving. All the world is hushed. Only Tommy moves. Only the sound of his pain penetrates the silence.

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

I watch for the space of a few moments, imagining myself spectator at some ghastly passion play. Then realization dawns. I place my trembling hands on Tommy’s shoulders. I pull him away, pressing his face to my chest.

            He is warm, and he smells of blood.

            It’s over.


End file.
